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Page 1

PREFACE

Although regular literary organs, and the critical
columns of the press, are both of comparatively recent
origin, we find that almost from the beginning our
journalists aspired to be critics as well as newsmongers.
Under Charles ii, Sir Roger L’Estrange issued
his Observator (1681), which was a weekly review,
not a chronicle; and John Dunton’s The Athenian
Mercury (1690), is best described as a sort of
early “Notes and Queries.” Here,
as elsewhere, Defoe developed this branch of journalism,
particularly in his Review (1704), and in Mist’s
Journal (1714). And, again, as in all other
departments, his methods were not materially improved
upon until Leigh Hunt, and his brother John, started
The Examiner in 1808, soon after the rise of
the Reviews. Addison and Steele, of course, had
treated literary topics in The Spectator or
The Tatler; but the serious discussion of contemporary
writers began with the Whig Edinburgh of 1802
and the Tory Quarterly of 1809.

By the end of George III’s reign every daily
paper had its column of book-notices; while 1817 marks
an epoch in the weekly press; when William Jerdan
started The Observator (parent of our Athenaeum)
in order to furnish (for one shilling weekly) “a
clear and instructive picture of the moral and literary
improvement of the time, and a complete and authentic
chronological literary record for reference.”

Though probably there is no form of literature more
widely practised, and less organised, than the review,
it would be safe to say that every example stands
somewhere between a critical essay and a publisher’s
advertisement. We need not, however, consider
here the many influences which may corrupt newspaper
criticism to-day, nor concern ourselves with those
legitimate “notices of books” which only
aim at “telling the story” or otherwise
offering guidance for an “order from the library.”

The question remains, on which we do not propose to
dogmatise, whether the ideal of a reviewer should
be critical or explanatory: whether, in other
words, he should attempt final judgment or offer comment
and analysis from which we may each form our own opinion.
Probably no hard and fast line can be drawn between
the review and the essay; yet a good volume of criticism
can seldom be gleaned from periodicals. For one
thing all journalism, whether consciously or unconsciously,
must contain an appeal to the moment. The reviewer
is introducing new work to his reader, the essayist,
or critic proper, may nearly always assume some familiarity
with his subject. The one hazards prophecy; the
other discusses, and illumines, a judgment already
formed, if not established. It is obvious that
such reviews as Macaulay’s in the Edinburgh
were often permanent contributions to critical history;
while, on the other hand, many ponderous effusions
of the Quarterly are only interesting as a
sign of the times.

Page 2

The fame of a review, however, does not always depend
on merit. The scandalous attacks on the Cockney
school, for example, were neither good literature
nor honest criticism. We still pause in wonder
before the streams of virulent personal abuse and
unbridled licence in temper which disgrace the early
pages of volumes we now associate with sound and dignified,
if somewhat conventional, utterances on the art of
Literature as viewed from the table-land of authority.
And, as inevitably the most famous reviews are those
which attend the birth of genius, we must include
more respectable errors of judgment, if we find also
several remarkable appreciations which prove singular
insight.

Following the “early” reviews, whether
distinguished for culpable blindness, private hostility,
or rare sympathy, we must depend for our second main
source of material upon that fortunate combination
of circumstances when one of the mighty has been invited
to pass judgment upon his peers. When Scott notices
Jane Austen, Macaulay James Boswell, Gladstone and
John Stuart Mill Lord Tennyson, the article acquires
a double value from author and subject. Curiously
enough, as it would seem to us in these days of advertisement,
many such treasures of criticism were published anonymously;
and accident has often aided research in the discovery
of their authorship. It is only too probable that
more were written than we have yet on record.

In reviewing, as elsewhere, the growth of professionalism
has tended to level the quality of work. The
mass of thoroughly competent criticism issued to-day
has raised enormously the general tone of the press;
but genuine men of letters are seldom employed to
welcome, or stifle, a newcomer; though Meredith, and
more frequently Swinburne, have on occasion elected
to pronounce judgment upon the passing generation;
as Mrs. Meynell or Mr. G.K. Chesterton have sometimes
said the right thing about their contemporaries.
The days when postcard notices from Gladstone secured
a record in sales are over; and, from whatever combination
of causes, we hear no more of famous reviews.

R. BRIMLEY JOHNSON.

It is with regret that I have found it impossible
to print more than a few of the following reviews
complete. The writing of those days was, in almost
every case, extremely prolix, and often irrelevant.
It nearly always makes heavy reading in the originals.
The principle of selection adopted is to retain
the most pithy, and attractive, portion of each article:
omitting quotations and the discussion of particular
passages. It therefore becomes necessary to remark—­in
justice to the writers—­that most of the
criticisms here quoted were accompanied by references
to what was regarded by the reviewer as evidence supporting
them. Most of the authors, or books, noticed however,
are sufficiently well known for the reader to have
no difficulty in judging for himself.

R. B. J.

OF CRITICISM AND CRITIC

Page 3

DR. JOHNSON

There is a certain race of men, that either imagine
it their duty, or make it their amusement, to hinder
the reception of every work of learning or genius,
who stand as sentinels in the avenues of fame, and
value themselves upon giving ignorance and envy the
first notice of a prey.

To these men, who distinguish themselves by the appellation
of Critics, it is necessary for a new author to find
some means of recommendation. It is probable,
that the most malignant of these persecutors might
be somewhat softened, and prevailed on, for a short
time, to remit their fury. Having for this purpose
considered many expedients, I find in the records
of ancient times, that Argus was lulled by music, and
Cerberus quieted with a sop; and am, therefore, inclined
to believe that modern critics, who, if they have
not the eyes, have the watchfulness of Argus, and
can bark as loud as Cerberus, though, perhaps, they
cannot bite with equal force, might be subdued by
methods of the same kind. I have heard that some
have been pacified with claret and a supper, and others
laid asleep with the soft notes of flattery.—­The
Rambler.

CHRISTOPHER NORTH

I care not one single curse for all the criticism
that ever was canted or decanted, or recanted.
Neither does the world. The world takes a poet
as it finds him, and seats him above or below the salt.
The world is as obstinate as a million mules, and
will not turn its head on one side or another for
all the shouting of the critical population that ever
was shouted. It is very possible that the world
is a bad judge. Well, then—­ appeal
to posterity, and be hanged to you—­and posterity
will affirm the judgment, with costs.—­Noctes
Ambrosianae, Sept., 1825.

Our current literature teems with thought and feeling,—­with
passion and imagination. There was Gifford, and
there are Jeffrey, and Southey ... and twenty—­forty—­fifty—­other
crack contributors to the Reviews, Magazines and Gazettes,
who have said more tender, and true, and fine, and
deep things in the way of criticism, than ever was
said before since the reign of Cadmus, ten thousand
times over,—­not in long, dull, heavy, formal,
prosy theories—­but flung off-hand, out of
the glowing mint—­a coinage of the purest
ore—­and stamped with the ineffaceable impress
of genius.—­Noctes Ambrosianae, April,
1829.

The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment.
EDMUND BURKE.

We must not underrate him who uses wit for subsistence,
and flies from the ingratitude of the age even to
a bookseller for redress. OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

The critical faculty is a rara avis; almost
as rare, indeed, as the phoenix, which appears only
once in five hundred years. ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER.

The Supreme Critic ... is ... that Unity, that Oversoul,
within which every man’s particular being is
contained and made one with all other. R. W.
EMERSON.

Page 4

Criticism’s best spiritual work which is to
keep man from a self-satisfaction which is retarding
and vulgarising, to lead him towards perfection, by
making his mind dwell upon what is excellent in itself,
and the absolute beauty and fitness of things.
MATTHEW ARNOLD.

The whole history of criticism has been a triumph
of authors over critics. R. G. MOULTON.

Our criticism is disabled by the unwillingness of
the critic to learn from an author, and his readiness
to mistrust him. D. H. HOWELLS.

We have too many small schoolmasters; yet not only
do I not question in literature the high utility of
criticism, but I should be tempted to say that the
part it plays may be the supremely beneficent one when
it proceeds from deep sources, from the efficient
combination of experience and perception. In
this light one sees the critic as the real helper of
mankind, a torch-bearing outrider, the interpreter
par excellence. HENRY JAMES.

FAMOUS REVIEWS

* * * *
*

THE EDINBURGH REVIEW

“A confederacy (the word conspiracy may
be libellous) to defend the worst atrocities of the
French, and to cry down every author to whom England
was dear and venerable. A better spirit now prevails
in the Edinburgh Review from the generosity
and genius of Macaulay. But in the days when
Brougham and his confederates were writers in it, more
falsehood and more malignity marked its pages than
any other journal in the language.”

W.S. LANDOR.

Landor is speaking, of course, with his usual impetuosity,
particularly moved by antipathy to Lord Brougham.
A fairer estimate of the “bluff and blue”
exponent of Whig principles may be obtained from our
brief estimate of Jeffrey below. His was the
informing spirit, at least in its earliest days, and
that spirit would brook no divided sway.

FRANCIS LORD JEFFREY
(1773-1850)

Jeffrey was editor of the Edinburgh Review
from its foundation in October 10th, 1802, till June,
1829; and continued to write for it until June, 1848.
He was more patronising in his abuse than either Blackwood
or the Quarterly, and on the whole fairer and
more dignified; though he was considerably influenced
by political bias. In fact, his judgments—­though
versatile—­were narrow, his most marked limitations
arising from blindness to the imaginative.

The short, vivacious figure (so low that he might
pass under your chin without ever catching the eye
even for a moment, says Lockhart), was far more impressive
when familiar than at first sight. Lord Cockburn
praises his legal abilities (whether as judge or advocate)
almost without qualification; but Wilson derides his
appearance in the House:—­“A cold
thin voice, doling out little, quaint, metaphysical
sentences with the air of a provincial lecturer on
logic and belles-lettres. A few good Whigs
of the old school adjourned upstairs, the Tories began
to converse de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis,
the Radicals were either snoring or grinning, and
the great gun of the north ceased firing amidst such
a hubbub of inattention, that even I was not aware
of the fact for several minutes.”

Page 5

He has been called “almost a lecturer in society,”
and it is clear that his difficulty always was to
cease talking. Men as different as Macaulay and
Charles Dickens have spoken with deep personal affection
of his memory.

In one of Carlyle’s inimitable “pen-portraits”
he is described as “a delicate, attractive,
dainty little figure, as he merely walked about, much
more if he were speaking: uncommonly bright, black
eyes, instinct with vivacity, intelligence and kindly
fire; roundish brow, delicate oval face, full, rapid
expression; figure light, nimble, pretty, though so
small, perhaps hardly five feet four in height....
His voice clear, harmonious, and sonorous, had something
of metallic in it, something almost plangent ... a
strange, swift, sharp-sounding, fitful modulation,
part of it pungent, quasi latrant, other parts
of it cooing, bantery, lovingly quizzical, which no
charm of his fine ringing voice (metallic tenor,
of sweet tone), and of his vivacious rapid looks and
pretty little attitudes and gestures, could altogether
reconcile you to, but in which he persisted through
good report and bad.”

* * * *
*

Perhaps Jeffrey’s most famous criticism was
the “This will never do” on Wordsworth;
of which Southey wrote to Scott, “Jeffrey, I
hear, has written what his friends call a crushing
review of the Excursion. He might as well seat
himself on Skiddaw, and fancy that he crushed the
mountain.”

It is obvious, indeed, that the Lake poets had little
respect for their “superior” reviewers;
whose opinions, on the other hand, were not subject
to influences from high places. It will be noticed
that Jefferey is even more severe on Southey’s
Laureate “Lays” than on his “Thalaba.”

The review on Moore, quoted below, was followed by
formal arrangements for a duel at Chalk Farm on 11th
August, 1806; but the police had orders to interrupt,
and pistols were loaded with paper. Even the semblance
of animosity was not maintained, as we find Moore
contributing to the Edinburgh before the end
of the same year.

We fear that the appreciation of Keats was partly
influenced by political considerations; since Leigh
Hunt had so emphatically welcomed him into the camp.
It remains, however, a pleasing contrast to the ferocious
onslaught on Endymion of Gifford printed below.

HENRY LORD BROUGHAM
(1779-1868)

Brougham was intimately associated with Jeffrey in
the foundation of the Edinburgh Review:
he is said to have written eighty articles in the
first twenty numbers, though like all his work, the
criticism was spoilt by egotism and vanity. The
fact is that an over-brilliant versatility injured
his work. Combining “in his own person the
characters of Solon, Lycurgus, Demosthenes, Archimedes,
Sir Isaac Newton, Lord Chesterfield, and a great many
more,” his restless genius accomplished nothing

Page 6

substantial or sound. His writing was far less
careful than his oratory. A man from whom almost
everything was expected, and who was always before
the eye of the public; he has been described as “the
God of Whiggish idolatry,” and as “impossible”
in society. Harriet Martineau is unsparing in
her criticism of his manners and language; and evidently
he was an inveterate swearer. His enthusiasm
for noble causes was infectious; only, as Coleridge
happily expressed it, “because his heart was
placed in what should have been his head, you were
never sure of him—­you always doubted his
sincerity.”

In the Opposition and at the Bar this eloquent energy
had full scope, “but as Lord Chancellor his
selfish disloyalty offended his colleagues while,”
as O’Connell remarked, “If Brougham knew
a little of Law, he would know a little of everything.”
Unquestionably his obvious failings obscured his real
eminence, and even hinder us, to-day, from doing full
justice to his memory.

* * * *
*

It was the following, somewhat heavy-handed, review
which inspired the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,
with all its “extraordinary powers of malicious
statement”—­truly a Roland for his
Oliver.

SYDNEY SMITH
(1771-1845)

The third founder of the Edinburgh and one
of its most aggressive reviewers, until March, 1827,
Sydney Smith has been described as “most provokingly
and audaciously personal in his strictures....
He was too complacent, too aboundingly self-satisfied,
too buoyantly full of spirits, to hate anybody; but
he burlesques them, derides them, and abuses them
with the most exasperating effrontery—­in
a way that is great fun to the reader, but exquisite
torture to the victim.” At the same time,
his wit was always governed by commonsense (its most
prevailing distinction); and, though almost unique
among humorists for his personal gaiety, “his
best work was done in promoting practical ends, and
his wit in its airiest gambols never escaped his control.”
There was, in fact, considerable independence—­and
even courage—­in his seriously inspired
attacks on various abuses, and on every form of affectation
and cant. Though his manners and conversation
were not precisely those we generally associate with
the Cloth, Sydney Smith published several volumes
of sermons, and always accepted the responsibilities
of his position as a clergyman with becoming industry.
Croker’s veiled sarcasm in the Quarterly
(printed below) was no more bitter, or truthful, than
similar utterances on any Whig.

* * * *
*

We know little to-day of—­

The sacred dramas of Miss Hannah More
Where Moses and the little muses snore,

but, in her own day, she was flattered in society
and a real influence among the serious-minded.
She understood the poor and gave them practical advice.
Sydney Smith, of course, would be in sympathy with
her “good works,” but could not resist
his joke.

Page 7

THOMAS BABINGTON LORD MACAULAY
(1800-1859)

To quote one of his own favourite expressions, “every
schoolboy knows” the outlines of Macaulay’s
life and work. We have recited the Lays, probably
read some of the History, possibly even heard of his
eloquent and unmeasured attacks on those whose literary
work incurred his displeasure. We know that his
memory was phenomenal, if his statements were not
always accurate. The biographers tell us further
that no one could be more simple in private life,
or more devoted to his own family: his nephews
and nieces having no idea that their favourite “Uncle
Tom” was a great man. Criticism, of course,
is by no means so unanimous. Mr. Augustine Birrell
has wittily remarked that his “style is ineffectual
for the purpose of telling the truth about anything”;
and James Thomson epitomised his political bias in
a biting paragraph:—­“Macaulay, historiographer
in chief to the Whigs, and the great prophet of Whiggery
which never had or will have a prophet, vehemently
judged that a man who could pass over from the celestial
Whigs to the infernal Tories must be a traitor false
as Judas, an apostate black as the Devil.”
Always a boy at heart, and singularly careless of
his appearance, Macaulay was so phenomenally successful
in every direction that envy may account for most
personal criticism not inspired by recognised opponents.
Those who called him a bore were most probably over-sensitive
about their own inability to hold up against arguments,
or opinions, they longed to combat.

He was a student at Lincoln’s Inn when the brilliant
article on the translation of a newly-found treatise
by Milton on Christian Doctrine appeared in
the Edinburgh (1825), and inaugurated a new
power in English prose. Macaulay himself declared
that it was “overloaded with gaudy and ungraceful
argument”; but it secured his literary reputation
and determined much of his career. He became an
influence on the Edinburgh, probably somewhat
modifying its whole tone, and generally identified
with its reputation. “The son of a Saint,”
says Christopher North, “who seems himself to
be something of a reviewer, is insidious as the serpent,
but fangless, as the glow worm”; and the Tory
press were, naturally, up in arms against the champion
critic of their pet prodigies.

* * * *
*

Southey received, as we must now admit, more
than his fair share of abuse from the Liberal press,
for the comfortable conservatism of his maturity;
and Macaulay did not love the Laureate. We note
that Blackwood’s defended him with spirit,
and Wilson’s protracted, and furious, attack
on Macaulay for this particular review may be found
in the Nodes Ambrosianae, April, 1830.

Croker, in all probability, deserved much of
the scorn here poured upon his editorial labour (though
it had merits which his critic deliberately
ignores); Wilson, again (Noctes Ambrosianae,
November, 1831), examines, and professes to confute,
almost every criticism in the review. Croker
himself found a convenient occasion for revenge in
his review of Macaulay’s History printed below.

Page 8

The interesting recognition of Gladstone awakes
pleasanter sentiments; especially when we notice the
return compliment (in the same Quarterly, but
twenty-seven years later than Croker’s attack)
of the statesman’s generous tribute. “Macaulay,”
says Gladstone, “was singularly free of vices
... one point only we reserve, a certain tinge of
occasional vindictiveness. Was he envious?
Never. Was he servile? No. Was he insolent?
No.... Was he idle? The question is ridiculous.
Was he false? No; but true as steel and transparent
as crystal. Was he vain? We hold that he
was not. At every point in the ugly list he stands
the trial.”

* * * *
*

ANONYMOUS

This earlier notice of Wordsworth is certainly in
exact sympathy with Jeffrey on the Excursion, and
may very well have come from the same pen. At
any rate, it introduces the Edinburgh attitude towards
the Lakers.

The criticism of Maturin has all the tone of moral
authority which provoked many readers of the Review,
and was, probably, in part responsible for the less
“measured” attitude adopted by the Quarterly.

LORD JEFFREY ON SOUTHEY’S “THALABA”

Poetry has this much, at least, in common with religion,
that its standards were fixed long ago, by certain
inspired writers, whose authority it is no longer
lawful to call in question; and that many profess
to be entirely devoted to it, who have no good works
to produce in support of their pretensions. The
catholic poetical church, too, has worked but few
miracles since the first ages of its establishment;
and has been more prolific, for a long time, of Doctors,
than of Saints: it has had its corruptions and
reformation also, and has given birth to an infinite
variety of heresies and errors, the followers of which
have hated and persecuted each other as cordially as
other bigots.

The author who is now before us, belongs to a sect
of poets, that has established itself in this country
within these ten or twelve years, and is looked upon,
we believe, as one of its chief champions and apostles.
The peculiar doctrines of this sect, it would not,
perhaps, be very easy to explain; but, that they are
dissenters from the established systems in
poetry and criticism, is admitted, and proved indeed,
by the whole tenor of their compositions. Though
they lay claim, we believe, to a creed and a revelation
of their own, there can be little doubt, that their
doctrines are of German origin, and have been
derived from some of the great modern reformers in
that country. Some of their leading principles,
indeed, are probably of an earlier date, and seem to
have been borrowed from the great apostle of Geneva.
As Mr. Southey is the first author, of this persuasion,
that has yet been brought before us for judgment,
we cannot discharge our inquisitorial office conscientiously,
without premising a few words upon the nature and
tendency of the tenets he has helped to promulgate.

Page 9

The disciples of this school boast much of its originality,
and seem to value themselves very highly, for having
broken loose from the bondage of ancient authority,
and re-asserted the independence of genius. Originality,
however, we are persuaded, is rarer than mere alteration;
and a man may change a good master for a bad one, without
finding himself at all nearer to independence.
That our new poets have abandoned the old models,
may certainly be admitted; but we have not been able
to discover that they have yet created any models
of their own; and are very much inclined to call in
question the worthiness of those to which they have
transferred their admiration. The productions
of this school, we conceive, are so far from being
entitled to the praise of originality, that they cannot
be better characterised, than by an enumeration of
the sources from which their materials have been derived.
The greater part of them, we apprehend, will be found
to be composed of the following elements: (1)
The antisocial principles, and distempered sensibility
of Rousseau—­his discontent with the present
constitution of society—­his paradoxical
morality, and his perpetual hankerings after some
unattainable state of voluptuous virtue and perfection.
(2) The simplicity and energy (horresco referens)
of Kotzebue and Schiller. (3) The homeliness and harshness
of some of Cowper’s language and versification,
interchanged occasionally with the innocence
of Ambrose Philips, or the quaintness of Quarles and
Dr. Donne. From the diligent study of these few
originals, we have no doubt that an entire art of
poetry may be collected, by the assistance of which,
the very gentlest of our readers may soon be
qualified to compose a poem as correctly versified
as Thalaba, and to deal out sentiment and description,
with all the sweetness of Lamb, and all the magnificence
of Coleridge.

The authors, of whom we are now speaking, have, among
them, unquestionably, a very considerable portion
of poetical talent, and have, consequently, been enabled
to seduce many into an admiration of the false taste
(as it appears to us) in which most of their productions
are composed. They constitute, at present, the
most formidable conspiracy that has lately been formed
against sound judgment in matters poetical; and are
entitled to a larger share of our censorial notice,
than could be spared for an individual delinquent.
We shall hope for the indulgence of our readers, therefore,
in taking this opportunity to inquire a little more
particularly into their merits, and to make a few
remarks upon those peculiarities which seem to be regarded
by their admirers as the surest proofs of their excellence.

Page 10

Their most distinguishing symbol, is undoubtedly an
affectation of great simplicity and familiarity of
language. They disdain to make use of the common
poetical phraseology, or to ennoble their diction by
a selection of fine or dignified expressions.
There would be too much art in this, for that
great love of nature with which they are all of them
inspired; and their sentiments, they are determined
shall be indebted, for their effect, to nothing but
their intrinsic tenderness or elevation. There
is something very noble and conscientious, we will
confess, in this plan of composition; but the misfortune
is, that there are passages in all poems, that can
neither be pathetic nor sublime; and that, on these
occasions, a neglect of the embellishments of language
is very apt to produce absolute meanness and insipidity.
The language of passion, indeed, can scarcely be deficient
in elevation; and when an author is wanting in that
particular, he may commonly be presumed to have failed
in the truth, as well as in the dignity of his expression.
The case, however, is extremely different with the
subordinate parts of a composition; with the narrative
and description, that are necessary to preserve its
connection; and the explanation, that must frequently
prepare us for the great scenes and splendid passages.
In these, all the requisite ideas may be conveyed,
with sufficient clearness, by the meanest and most
negligent expressions; and if magnificence or beauty
is ever to be observed in them, it must have been
introduced from some other motive than that of adapting
the style to the subject. It is in such passages,
accordingly, that we are most frequently offended with
low and inelegant expressions; and that the language,
which was intended to be simple and natural, is found
oftenest to degenerate into mere slovenliness and
vulgarity. It is in vain, too, to expect that
the meanness of those parts may be redeemed by the
excellence of others. A poet, who aims at all
at sublimity or pathos, is like an actor in a high
tragic character, and must sustain his dignity throughout,
or become altogether ridiculous. We are apt enough
to laugh at the mock-majesty of those whom we know
to be but common mortals in private; and cannot permit
Hamlet to make use of a single provincial intonation,
although it should only be in his conversation with
the grave-diggers.

The followers of simplicity are, therefore, at all
times in danger of occasional degradation; but the
simplicity of this new school seems intended to ensure
it. Their simplicity does not consist, by any
means, in the rejection of glaring or superfluous ornament—­in
the substitution of elegance to splendour, or in that
refinement of art which seeks concealment in its own
perfection. It consists, on the contrary, in
a very great degree, in the positive and bona fide
rejection of art altogether, and in the bold use of
those rude and negligent expressions, which would
be banished by a little discrimination. One of

Page 11

their own authors, indeed, has very ingeniously set
forth (in a kind of manifesto that preceded one of
their most flagrant acts of hostility), that it was
their capital object “to adapt to the uses of
poetry, the ordinary language of conversation among
the middling and lower orders of the people.”
What advantages are to be gained by the success of
this project, we confess ourselves unable to conjecture.
The language of the higher and more cultivated orders
may fairly be presumed to be better than that of their
inferiors: at any rate, it has all those associations
in its favour, by means of which, a style can ever
appear beautiful or exalted, and is adapted to the
purposes of poetry, by having been long consecrated
to its use. The language of the vulgar, on the
other hand, has all the opposite associations to contend
with; and must seem unfit for poetry (if there were
no other reason), merely because it has scarcely ever
been employed in it. A great genius may indeed
overcome these disadvantages; but we can scarcely
conceive that he should court them. We may excuse
a certain homeliness of language in the productions
of a ploughman or a milkwoman; but we cannot bring
ourselves to admire it in an author, who has had occasion
to indite odes to his college bell, and inscribe hymns
to the Penates.

But the mischief of this new system is not confined
to the depravation of language only; it extends to
the sentiments and emotions, and leads to the debasement
of all those feelings which poetry is designed to
communicate. It is absurd to suppose, that an
author should make use of the language of the vulgar,
to express the sentiments of the refined. His
professed object, in employing that language, is to
bring his compositions nearer to the true standard
of nature; and his intention to copy the sentiments
of the lower orders, is implied in his resolution to
make use of their style. Now, the different classes
of society have each of them a distinct character,
as well as a separate idiom; and the names of the
various passions to which they are subject respectively,
have a signification that varies essentially according
to the condition of the persons to whom they are applied.
The love, or grief, or indignation of an enlightened
and refined character, is not only expressed in a
different language, but is in itself a different emotion
from the love, or grief, or anger, of a clown, a tradesman,
or a market-wench. The things themselves are
radically and obviously distinct; and the representation
of them is calculated to convey a very different train
of sympathies and sensations to the mind. The
question, therefore, comes simply to be—­which
of them is the most proper object for poetical imitation?
It is needless for us to answer a question, which the
practice of all the world has long ago decided irrevocably.
The poor and vulgar may interest us, in poetry, by
their situation; but never, we apprehend, by
any sentiments that are peculiar to their condition,

Page 12

and still less by any language that is characteristic
of it. The truth is, that it is impossible to
copy their diction or their sentiments correctly,
in a serious composition; and this, not merely because
poverty makes men ridiculous, but because just taste
and refined sentiment are rarely to be met with among
the uncultivated part of mankind; and a language,
fitted for their expression, can still more rarely
form any part of their “ordinary conversation.”

The low-bred heroes, and interesting rustics of poetry,
have no sort of affinity to the real vulgar of this
world; they are imaginary beings, whose characters
and language are in contrast with their situation;
and please those who can be pleased with them, by
the marvellous, and not by the nature of such a combination.
In serious poetry, a man of the middling or lower
order must necessarily lay aside a great deal
of his ordinary language; he must avoid errors in
grammar and orthography; and steer clear of the cant
of particular professions, and of every impropriety
that is ludicrous or disgusting: nay, he must
speak in good verse, and observe all the graces in
prosody and collocation. After all this, it may
not be very easy to say how we are to find him out
to be a low man, or what marks can remain of the ordinary
language of conversation in the inferior orders of
society. If there be any phrases that are not
used in good society, they will appear as blemishes
in the composition, no less palpably, than errors
in syntax or quality; and, if there be no such phrases,
the style cannot be characteristic of that condition
of life, the language of which it professes to have
adopted. All approximation to that language,
in the same manner, implies a deviation from that
purity and precision, which no one, we believe, ever
violated spontaneously.

It has been argued, indeed (for men will argue in
support of what they do not venture to practise),
that as the middling and lower orders of society constitute
by far the greater part of mankind, so, their feelings
and expressions should interest more extensively, and
may be taken, more fairly than any other, for the
standards of what is natural and true. To this
it seems obvious to answer, that the arts that aim
at exciting admiration and delight, do not take their
models from what is ordinary, but from what is excellent;
and that our interest in the representation of any
event, does not depend upon our familiarity with the
original, but on its intrinsic importance, and the
celebrity of the parties it concerns. The sculptor
employs his art in delineating the graces of Antinous
or Apollo, and not in the representation of those
ordinary forms that belong to the crowd of his admirers.
When a chieftain perishes in battle, his followers
mourn more for him, than for thousands of their equals
that may have fallen around him.

Page 13

After all, it must be admitted, that there is a class
of persons (we are afraid they cannot be called readers),
to whom the representation of vulgar manners, in vulgar
language, will afford much entertainment. We
are afraid, however, that the ingenious writers who
supply the hawkers and ballad-singers, have very nearly
monopolised that department, and are probably better
qualified to hit the taste of their customers, than
Mr. Southey, or any of his brethren, can yet pretend
to be. To fit them for the higher task of original
composition, it would not be amiss if they were to
undertake a translation of Pope or Milton into the
vulgar tongue, for the benefit of those children of
nature.

There is another disagreeable effect of this affected
simplicity, which, though of less importance than
those which have been already noticed, it may yet
be worth while to mention: This is, the extreme
difficulty of supporting the same low tone of expression
throughout, and the inequality that is consequently
introduced into the texture of the composition.
To an author of reading and education, it is a style
that must always be assumed and unnatural, and one
from which he will be perpetually tempted to deviate.
He will rise, therefore, every now and then, above
the level to which he has professedly degraded himself;
and make amends for that transgression, by a fresh
effort of descension. His composition, in short,
will be like that of a person who is attempting to
speak in an obsolete or provincial dialect; he will
betray himself by expressions of occasional purity
and elegance, and exert himself to efface that impression,
by passages of unnatural meanness or absurdity.

In making these strictures on the perverted taste
for simplicity, that seems to distinguish our modern
school of poetry, we have no particular allusion to
Mr. Southey, or the production now before us:
On the contrary, he appears to us, to be less addicted
to this fault than most of his fraternity; and if
we were in want of examples to illustrate the preceding
observations, we should certainly look for them in
the effusions of that poet who commemorates, with
so much effect, the chattering of Harry Gill’s
teeth, tells the tale of the one-eyed huntsman “who
had a cheek like a cherry,” and beautifully warns
his studious friend of the risk he ran of “growing
double.”

* * * *
*

The style of our modern poets, is that, no
doubt, by which they are most easily distinguished:
but their genius has also an internal character; and
the peculiarities of their taste may be discovered,
without the assistance of their diction. Next
after great familiarity of language, there is nothing
that appears to them so meritorious as perpetual exaggeration
of thought. There must be nothing moderate, natural,
or easy, about their sentiments. There must be
a “qu’il mourut,” and a “let
there be light,” in every line; and all their
characters must be in agonies and ecstasies, from their

Page 14

entrance to their exit. To those who are acquainted
with their productions, it is needless to speak of
the fatigue that is produced by this unceasing summons
to admiration, or of the compassion which is excited
by the spectacle of these eternal strainings and distortions.
Those authors appear to forget, that a whole poem
cannot be made up of striking passages; and that the
sensations produced by sublimity, are never so powerful
and entire, as when they are allowed to subside and
revive, in a slow and spontaneous succession.
It is delightful, now and then, to meet with a rugged
mountain, or a roaring stream; but where there is no
funny slope, nor shaded plain, to relieve them—­where
all is beetling cliff and yawning abyss, and the landscape
presents nothing on every side but prodigies and terrors—­the
head is apt to gow giddy, and the heart to languish
for the repose and security of a less elevated region.

The effect even of genuine sublimity, therefore, is
impaired by the injudicious frequency of its exhibition,
and the omission of those intervals and breathing-places,
at which the mind should be permitted to recover from
its perturbation or astonishment: but, where it
has been summoned upon a false alarm, and disturbed
in the orderly course of its attention, by an impotent
attempt at elevation, the consequences are still more
disastrous. There is nothing so ridiculous (at
least for a poet) as to fail in great attempts.
If the reader foresaw the failure, he may receive
some degree of mischievous satisfaction from its punctual
occurrence; if he did not, he will be vexed and disappointed;
and, in both cases, he will very speedily be disgusted
and fatigued. It would be going too far, certainly,
to maintain, that our modern poets have never succeeded
in their persevering endeavours at elevation and emphasis;
but it is a melancholy fact, that their successes
bear but a small proportion to their miscarriages;
and that the reader who has been promised an energetic
sentiment, or sublime allusion, must often be contented
with a very miserable substitute. Of the many
contrivances they employ to give the appearance of
uncommon force and animation to a very ordinary conception,
the most usual is, to wrap it up in a veil of mysterious
and unintelligible language, which flows past with
so much solemnity, that it is difficult to believe
it conveys nothing of any value. Another device
for improving the effect of a cold idea, is, to embody
it in a verse of unusual harshness and asperity.
Compound words, too, of a portentous sound and conformation,
are very useful in giving an air of energy and originality;
and a few lines of scripture, written out into verse
from the original prose, have been found to have a
very happy effect upon those readers to whom they
have the recommendation of novelty.

Page 15

The qualities of style and imagery, however, form
but a small part of the characteristics by which a
literary faction is to be distinguished. The
subject and object of their compositions, and the principles
and opinions they are calculated to support, constitute
a far more important criterion, and one to which it
is usually altogether as easy to refer. Some
poets are sufficiently described as the flatterers
of greatness and power, and others as the champions
of independence. One set of writers is known
by its antipathy to decency and religion; another,
by its methodistical cant and intolerance. Our
new school of poetry has a moral character also; though
it may not be possible, perhaps, to delineate it quite
so concisely.

A splenetic and idle discontent with the existing
institutions of society, seems to be at the bottom
of all their serious and peculiar sentiments.
Instead of contemplating the wonders and the pleasures
which civilization has created for mankind, they are
perpetually brooding over the disorders by which its
progress has been attended. They are filled with
horror and compassion at the sight of poor men spending
their blood in the quarrels of princes, and brutifying
their sublime capabilities in the drudgery of unremitting
labour. For all sorts of vice and profligacy
in the lower orders of society, they have the same
virtuous horror, and the same tender compassion.
While the existence of these offences overpowers them
with grief and confusion, they never permit themselves
to feel the smallest indignation or dislike towards
the offenders. The present vicious constitution
of society alone is responsible for all these enormities:
the poor sinners are but the helpless victims or instruments
of its disorders, and could not possibly have avoided
the errors into which they have been betrayed.
Though they can bear with crimes, therefore, they
cannot reconcile themselves to punishments; and have
an unconquerable antipathy to prisons, gibbets, and
houses of correction, as engines of oppression, and
instruments of atrocious injustice. While the
plea of moral necessity is thus artfully brought forward
to convert all the excesses of the poor into innocent
misfortunes, no sort of indulgence is shown to the
offences of the powerful and rich. Their oppressions,
and seductions, and debaucheries, are the theme of
many an angry verse; and the indignation and abhorrence
of the reader is relentlessly conjured up against those
perturbators of society, and scourges of mankind.

It is not easy to say, whether the fundamental absurdity
of this doctrine, or the partiality of its application,
be entitled to the severest reprehension. If
men are driven to commit crimes, through a certain
moral necessity; other men are compelled, by a similar
necessity, to hate and despise them for their commission.
The indignation of the sufferer is at least as natural
as the guilt of him who makes him suffer; and the
good order of society would probably be as well preserved,

Page 16

if our sympathies were sometimes called forth in behalf
of the former. At all events, the same apology
ought certainly to be admitted for the wealthy, as
for the needy offender. They are subject alike
to the overruling influence of necessity, and equally
affected by the miserable condition of society.
If it be natural for a poor man to murder and rob,
in order to make himself comfortable, it is no less
natural for a rich man to gormandise and domineer,
in order to have the full use of his riches.
Wealth is just as valid an excuse for the one class
of vices, as indigence is for the other. There
are many other peculiarities of false sentiment in
the productions of this class of writers, that are
sufficiently deserving of commemoration; but we have
already exceeded our limits in giving these general
indications of their character, and must now hasten
back to the consideration of the singular performance
which has given occasion to all this discussion.

The first thing that strikes the reader of Thalaba,
is the singular structure of the versification, which
is a jumble of all the measures that are known in
English poetry (and a few more), without rhyme, and
without any sort of regularity in their arrangement.
Blank odes have been known in this country about as
long as English sapphics and dactylics; and both have
been considered, we believe, as a species of monsters,
or exotics, that were not very likely to propagate,
or thrive, in so unpropitious a climate. Mr.
Southey, however, has made a vigorous effort for their
naturalisation, and generously endangered his own
reputation in their behalf. The melancholy fate
of his English sapphics, we believe, is but too generally
known; and we can scarcely predict a more favourable
issue to the present experiment. Every combination
of different measures is apt to perplex and disturb
the reader who is not familiar with it; and we are
never reconciled to a stanza of a new structure, till
we have accustomed our ear to it by two or three repetitions.
This is the case, even where we have the assistance
of rhyme to direct us in our search after regularity,
and where the definite form and appearance of a stanza
assures us that regularity is to be found. Where
both of these are wanting, it may be imagined that
our condition will be still more deplorable; and a
compassionate author might even excuse us, if we were
unable to distinguish this kind of verse from prose.
In reading verse, in general, we are guided to the
discovery of its melody, by a sort of preconception
of its cadence and compass; without which, it might
often fail to be suggested by the mere articulation
of the syllables. If there be any one, whose recollection
does not furnish him with evidence of this fact, he
may put it to the test of experiment, by desiring
any of his illiterate acquaintances to read off some
of Mr. Southey’s dactylics, or Sir Philip Sidney’s
hexameters. It is the same thing with the more
unusual measures of the ancient authors. We have

Page 17

never known any one who fell in, at the first trial,
with the proper rhyme and cadence of the pervigilium
Veneris, or the choral lyrics of the Greek dramatists.
The difficulty, however, is virtually the same, as
to every new combination; and it is an unsurmountable
difficulty, where such new combinations are not repeated
with any degree of uniformity, but are multiplied,
through the whole composition, with an unbounded licence
of variation. Such, however, is confessedly the
case with the work before us; and it really seems
unnecessary to make any other remark on its versification.

The author, however, entertains a different opinion
of it. So far from apprehending that it may cost
his readers some trouble to convince themselves that
the greater part of the book is not mere prose, written
out into the form of verse, he is persuaded that its
melody is more obvious and perceptible than that of
our vulgar measures. “One advantage,”
says Mr. Southey, “this metre assuredly
possesses; the dullest reader cannot distort it into
discord: he may read it with a prose mouth,
but its flow and fall will still be perceptible.”
We are afraid, there are duller readers in the world
than Mr. Southey is aware of.

* * * *
*

The subject of this poem is almost as ill chosen as
the diction; and the conduct of the fable as disorderly
as the versification. The corporation of magicians,
that inhabit “the Domdaniel caverns, under the
roots of the ocean,” had discovered, that a
terrible destroyer was likely to rise up against
them from the seed of Hodeirah, a worthy Arab, with
eight fine children. Immediately the murder of
all those innocents is resolved on; and a sturdy assassin
sent with instructions to destroy the whole family
(as Mr. Southey has it) “root and branch.”
The good man, accordingly, and seven of his children,
are dispatched; but a cloud comes over the mother
and the remaining child; and the poem opens with the
picture of the widow and her orphan wandering, by night,
over the desarts of Arabia. The old lady, indeed,
might as well have fallen under the dagger of the
Domdanielite; for she dies, without doing anything
for her child, in the end of the first book; and little
Thalaba is left crying in the wilderness. Here
he is picked up by a good old Arab, who takes him
home, and educates him like a pious mussulman; and
he and the old man’s daughter fall in love with
each other, according to the invariable custom in
all such cases. The magicians, in the meantime,
are hunting him over the face of the whole earth;
and one of them gets near enough to draw his dagger
to stab him, when a providential simoom lays
him dead on the sand. From the dead sorcerer’s
finger, Thalaba takes a ring, inscribed with some
unintelligible characters, which he is enabled to
interpret by the help of some other unintelligible
characters that he finds on the forehead of a locust;
and soon after takes advantage of an eclipse of the

Page 18

sun, to set out on his expedition against his father’s
murderers, whom he understands (we do not very well
know how) he has been commissioned to exterminate.
Though they are thus seeking him, and he seeking them,
it is amazing what difficulty they find in meeting:
they do meet, however, every now and then, and many
sore evils does the Destroyer suffer at their hands.
By faith and fortitude, however, and the occasional
assistance of the magic implements he strips them of,
he is enabled to baffle and elude their malice, till
he is conducted, at last, to the Domdaniel cavern,
where he finds them assembled, and pulls down the
roof of it upon their heads and his own; perishing,
like Samson, in the final destruction of his enemies.

From this little sketch of the story, our readers
will easily perceive, that it consists altogether
of the most wild and extravagant fictions, and openly
sets nature and probability at defiance. In its
action, it is not an imitation of anything; and excludes
all rational criticism, as to the choice and succession
of its incidents. Tales of this sort may amuse
children, and interest, for a moment, by the prodigies
they exhibit, and the multitude of events they bring
together: but the interest expires with the novelty;
and attention is frequently exhausted, even before
curiosity has been gratified. The pleasure afforded
by performances of this sort, is very much akin to
that which may be derived from the exhibition of a
harlequin farce; where, instead of just imitations
of nature and human character, we are entertained
with the transformation of cauliflowers and beer-barrels,
the apparition of ghosts and devils, and all the other
magic of the wooden sword. Those who can prefer
this eternal sorcery, to the just and modest representation
of human actions and passions, will probably take
more delight in walking among the holly griffins,
and yew sphinxes of the city gardener, than in ranging
among the groves and lawns which have been laid out
by a hand that feared to violate nature, as much as
it aspired to embellish her; and disdained the easy
art of startling by novelties, and surprising by impropriety.

Supernatural beings, though easily enough raised,
are known to be very troublesome in the management,
and have frequently occasioned much perplexity to
poets and other persons who have been rash enough to
call for their assistance. It is no very easy
matter to preserve consistency in the disposal of
powers, with the limits of which we are so far from
being familiar; and when it is necessary to represent
our spiritual persons as ignorant, or suffering, we
are very apt to forget the knowledge and the powers
with which we had formerly invested them. The
ancient poets had several unlucky rencounters of this
sort with Destiny and the other deities; and Milton
himself is not a little hampered with the material
and immaterial qualities of his angels. Enchanters
and witches may, at first sight, appear more manageable;

Page 19

but Mr. Southey has had difficulty enough with them;
and cannot be said, after all, to have kept his fable
quite clear and intelligible. The stars had said,
that the Destroyer might be cut off in that hour when
his father and brethren were assassinated; yet he
is saved by a special interposition of heaven.
Heaven itself, however, had destined him to extirpate
the votaries of Eblis; and yet, long before this work
is done, a special message is sent to him, declaring,
that, if he chooses, the death-angel is ready to take
him away instead of the sorcerer’s daughter.
In the beginning of the story, too, the magicians
are quite at a loss where to look for him; and Abdaldar
only discovers him by accident, after a long search;
yet, no sooner does he leave the old Arab’s
tent, than Lobaba comes up to him, disguised and prepared
for his destruction. The witches have also a
decoy ready for him in the desart; yet he sups with
Okba’s daughter, without any of the sorcerers
being aware of it; and afterwards proceeds to consult
the simorg, without meeting with any obstacle or molestation.
The simoom kills Abdaldar, too, in spite of that ring
which afterwards protects Thalaba from lightning,
and violence, and magic. The Destroyer’s
arrow then falls blunted from Lobaba’s breast,
who is knocked down, however, by a shower of sand
of his own raising; and this same arrow, which could
make no impression on the sorcerer, kills the magic
bird of Aloadin, and pierces the rebellious spirit
that guarded the Domdaniel door. The whole infernal
band, indeed, is very feebly and heavily pourtrayed.
They are a set of stupid, undignified, miserable wretches,
quarrelling with each other, and trembling in the prospect
of inevitable destruction. None of them even
appears to have obtained the price of their self-sacrifice
in worldly honours and advancement, except Mohareb;
and he, though assured by destiny that there was one
death-blow appointed for him and Thalaba, is yet represented,
in the concluding scene, as engaged with him in furious
combat, and aiming many a deadly blow at that life
on which his own was dependent. If the innocent
characters in this poem were not delineated with more
truth and feeling, the notoriety of the author would
scarcely have induced us to bestow so much time on
its examination.

Though the tissue of adventures through which Thalaba
is conducted in the course of this production, be
sufficiently various and extraordinary, we must not
set down any part of the incidents to the credit of
the author’s invention. He has taken great
pains, indeed, to guard against such a supposition;
and has been as scrupulously correct in the citation
of his authorities, as if he were the compiler of a
true history, and thought his reputation would be
ruined by the imputation of a single fiction.
There is not a prodigy, accordingly, or a description,
for which he does not fairly produce his vouchers,
and generally lays before his readers the whole original

Page 20

passage from which his imitation has been taken.
In this way, it turns out, that the book is entirely
composed of scraps, borrowed from the oriental tale
books, and travels into the Mahometan countries, seasoned
up for the English reader with some fragments of our
own ballads, and shreds of our older sermons.
The composition and harmony of the work, accordingly,
is much like the pattern of that patch-work drapery
that is sometimes to be met with in the mansions of
the industrious, where a blue tree overshadows a shell-fish,
and a gigantic butterfly seems ready to swallow up
Palemon and Lavinia. The author has the merit
merely of cutting out each of his figures from the
piece where its inventor had placed it, and stitching
them down together in these judicious combinations.

It is impossible to peruse this poem, with the notes,
without feeling that it is the fruit of much reading,
undertaken for the express purpose of fabricating
some such performance. The author has set out
with a resolution to make an oriental story, and a
determination to find the materials of it in the books
to which he had access. Every incident, therefore,
and description—­every superstitious usage,
or singular tradition, that appeared to him susceptible
of poetical embellishment, or capable of picturesque
representation, he has set down for this purpose,
and adopted such a fable and plan of composition, as
might enable him to work up all his materials, and
interweave every one of his quotations, without any
extraordinary violation of unity or order.
When he had filled his common-place book, he began
to write; and his poem is little else than his common-place
book versified.

It may easily be imagined, that a poem constructed
upon such a plan, must be full of cumbrous and misplaced
description, and overloaded with a crowd of incidents
equally unmeaning and ill assorted. The tedious
account of the palace of Shedad, in the first book—­the
description of the Summer and Winter occupations of
the Arabs, in the third—­the ill-told story
of Haruth and Maruth—­the greater part of
the occurrences in the island of Mohareb—­the
paradise of Aloadin, etc., etc.—­are
all instances of disproportioned and injudicious ornaments,
which never could have presented themselves to an
author who wrote from the suggestions of his own fancy;
and have evidently been introduced, from the author’s
unwillingness to relinquish the corresponding passages
in D’Herbelot, Sale, Volney, etc., which
appeared to him to have great capabilities for poetry.

This imitation, or admiration of Oriental imagery,
however, does not bring so much suspicion on his taste,
as the affection he betrays for some of his domestic
models. The former has, for the most part, the
recommendation of novelty; and there is always a certain
pleasure in contemplating the costume of a
distant nation, and the luxuriant landscape of an
Asiatic climate. We cannot find the same apology,
however, for Mr. Southey’s partiality to the
drawling vulgarity of some of our old English ditties.

Page 21

* * * *
*

From the extracts and observations which we have hitherto
presented to our readers, it will be natural for them
to conclude, that our opinion of this poem is very
decidedly unfavourable; and that we are not disposed
to allow it any sort of merit. This, however,
is by no means the case. We think it written,
indeed, in a very vicious taste, and liable, upon
the whole, to very formidable objections: But
it would not be doing justice to the genius of the
author, if we were not to add, that, it contains passages
of very singular beauty and force, and displays a
richness of poetical conception, that would do honour
to more faultless compositions. There is little
of human character in the poem, indeed; because Thalaba
is a solitary wanderer from the solitary tent of his
protector: But the home group, in which his infancy
was spent, is pleasingly delineated; and there is
something irresistibly interesting in the innocent
love, and misfortunes, and fate of his Oneiza.
The catastrophe of her story is given, it appears
to us, with great spirit and effect, though the beauties
are of that questionable kind, that trespass on the
border of impropriety, and partake more of the character
of dramatic, than of narrative poetry. After delivering
her from the polluted paradise of Aloadin, he prevails
on her to marry him before his mission is accomplished.
She consents with great reluctance; and the marriage
feast, with its processions, songs, and ceremonies,
is described in some joyous stanzas. The book
ends with these verses—­

And now the marriage feast is spread,
And from the finished banquet now
The wedding guests
are gone.
*
* * * *
Who comes from the bridal chamber?
It is Azrael, the Angel of Death.

The next book opens with Thalaba lying distracted
upon her grave, in the neighbourhood of which he had
wandered, till “the sun, and the wind, and
the rain, had rusted his raven locks”; and there
he is found by the father of his bride, and visited
by her ghost, and soothed and encouraged to proceed
upon his holy enterprise. He sets out on his
lonely way, and is entertained the first night by a
venerable dervise: As they are sitting at meal,
a bridal procession passes by, with dance,
and song, and merriment. The old dervise blessed
them as they passed; but Thalaba looked on, “and
breathed a low deep groan, and hid his face.”
These incidents are skilfully imagined, and are narrated
in a very impressive manner.

Though the witchery scenes are in general but
poorly executed, and possess little novelty to those
who have read the Arabian Nights Entertainments, there
is, occasionally, some fine description, and striking
combination. We do not remember any poem, indeed,
that presents, throughout, a greater number of lively
images, or could afford so many subjects for the pencil.

* * * *
*

Page 22

All the productions of this author, it appears to
us, bear very distinctly the impression of an amiable
mind, a cultivated fancy, and a perverted taste.
His genius seems naturally to delight in the representation
of domestic virtues and pleasures, and the brilliant
delineation of external nature. In both these
departments, he is frequently very successful; but
he seems to want vigour for the loftier flights of
poetry. He is often puerile, diffuse, and artificial,
and seems to have but little acquaintance with those
chaster and severer graces, by whom the epic muse
would be most suitably attended. His faults are
always aggravated, and often created, by his partiality
for the peculiar manner of that new school of poetry,
of which he is a faithful disciple, and to the glory
of which he has sacrificed greater talents and acquisitions,
than can be boasted of by any of his associates.

ON SOUTHEY’S LAUREATE LAYS

A poet laureate, we take it, is naturally a ridiculous
person: and has scarcely any safe course to follow,
in times like the present, but to bear his faculties
with exceeding meekness, and to keep as much as possible
in the shade. A stipendiary officer of the Royal
household, bound to produce two lyrical compositions
ever year, in praise of his Majesty’s person
and government, is undoubtedly an object which it is
difficult to contemplate with gravity; and which can
only have been retained in existence, from that love
of antique pomp and establishment which has embellished
our Court with so many gold-sticks and white rods,
and such trains of beef-eaters and grooms of the stole—­though
it has submitted to the suppression of the more sprightly
appendages of a king’s fool, or a court jester.
That the household poet should have survived the other
wits of the establishment, can only be explained by
the circumstance of his office being more easily converted
into one of mere pomp and ceremony, and coming thus
to afford an antient and well-sounding name for a
moderate sinecure. For more than a century, accordingly,
it has existed on this footing; and its duties, like
those of the other personages to whom we have just
alluded, have been discharged with a decorous gravity
and unobtrusive quietness, which has provoked no derision,
merely because it has attracted no notice.

The present possessor, however, appears to have other
notions on the subject; and has very distinctly manifested
his resolution not to rest satisfied with the salary,
sherry, and safe obscurity of his predecessors, but
to claim a real power and prerogative in the world
of letters, in virtue of his title and appointment.
Now, in this, we conceive, with all due humility,
that there is a little mistake of fact, and a little

Page 23

error of judgment. The laurel which the King gives,
we are credibly informed, has nothing at all in common
with that which is bestowed by the Muses; and the
Prince Regent’s warrant is absolutely of no
authority in the court of Apollo. If this be the
case, however, it follows, that a poet laureate has
no sort of precedency among poets,—­ whatever
may be his place among pages and clerks of the kitchen;—­and
that he has no more pretensions as an author, than
if his appointment had been to the mastership of the
stag-hounds. When he takes state upon him with
the public, therefore, in consequence of his office,
he really is guilty of as ludicrous a blunder as the
worthy American Consul, in one of the Hanse
towns, who painted the Roman fasces on the pannel
of his buggy, and insisted upon calling his foot-boy
and clerk his lictors. Except when he
is in his official duty, therefore, the King’s
house-poet would do well to keep the nature of his
office out of sight; and, when he is compelled to
appear in it in public, should try to get through
with the business as quickly and quietly as possible.
The brawny drayman who enacts the Champion of England
in the Lord Mayor’s show, is in some danger
of being sneered at by the spectators, even when he
paces along with the timidity and sobriety that becomes
his condition; but if he were to take it into his
head to make serious boast of his prowess, and to
call upon the city bards to celebrate his heroic acts,
the very apprentices could not restrain their laughter,—­and
“the humorous man” would have but small
chance of finishing his part in peace.

Mr. Southey could not be ignorant of all this; and
yet it appears that he could not have known it all.
He must have been conscious, we think, of the ridicule
attached to his office, and might have known that there
were only two ways of counteracting it,—­either
by sinking the office altogether in his public appearances,
or by writing such very good verses in the discharge
of it, as might defy ridicule, and render neglect
impossible. Instead of this, however, he has allowed
himself to write rather worse than any Laureate before
him, and has betaken himself to the luckless and vulgar
expedient of endeavouring to face out the thing by
an air of prodigious confidence and assumption:—­and
has had the usual fortune of such undertakers, by
becoming only more conspicuously ridiculous.
The badness of his official productions indeed is
something really wonderful,—­though not more
so than the amazing self-complacency and self-praise
with which they are given to the world. With
the finest themes in the world for that sort of writing,
they are the dullest, tamest, and most tedious things
ever poor critic was condemned, or other people vainly
invited, to read. They are a great deal more
wearisome, and rather more unmeaning and unnatural,
than the effusions of his predecessors, Messrs. Pye
and Whitehead; and are moreover disfigured with the
most abominable egotism, conceit and dogmatism, than

Page 24

we ever met with in any thing intended for the public
eye. They are filled, indeed, with praises of
the author himself, and his works, and his laurel,
and his dispositions; notices of his various virtues
and studies; puffs of the productions he is preparing
for the press, and anticipations of the fame which
he is to reap by their means, from a less ungrateful
age; and all this delivered with such an oracular
seriousness and assurance, that it is easy to see the
worthy Laureate thinks himself entitled to share in
the prerogatives of that royalty which he is bound
to extol, and has resolved to make it

—­his great example as it is his theme.

For, as sovereign Princes are permitted, in their
manifestoes and proclamations, to speak of their own
gracious pleasure and royal wisdom, without imputation
of arrogance, so, our Laureate has persuaded himself
that he may address the subject world in the same lofty
strains, and that they will listen with as dutiful
an awe to the authoritative exposition of his own
genius and glory. What might have been the success
of the experiment, if the execution had been as masterly
as the design is bold, we shall not trouble ourselves
to conjecture; but the contrast between the greatness
of the praise and the badness of the poetry in which
it is conveyed, and to which it is partly applied,
is abundantly decisive of its result in the present
instance, as well as in all the others in which the
ingenious author has adopted the same style. We
took some notice of the Carmen Triumphale,
which stood at the head of the series. But of
the Odes which afterwards followed to the Prince Regent,
and the Sovereigns and Generals who came to visit him,
we had the charity to say nothing; and were willing
indeed to hope, that the lamentable failure of that
attempt might admonish the author, at least as effectually
as any intimations of ours. Here, however, we
have him again, with a Lay of the Laureate,
and a Carmen Nuptiale, if possible still more
boastful and more dull than any of his other celebrations.
It is necessary, therefore, to bring the case once
more before the Public, for the sake both of correction
and example; and as the work is not likely to find
many readers, and is of a tenor which would not be
readily believed upon any general representation, we
must now beg leave to give a faithful analysis of
its different parts, with a few specimens of the taste
and manner of its execution.

Its object is to commemorate the late auspicious marriage
of the presumptive Heiress of the English crown with
the young Prince of Saxe-Cobourg; and consists of
a Proem, a Dream, and an Epilogue—­with a
L’envoy, and various annotations. The Proem,
as was most fitting, is entirely devoted to the praise
of the Laureate himself; and contains an account,
which cannot fail to be very interesting, both to his
Royal auditors and to the world at large, of his early
studies and attainments—­the excellence

Page 25

of his genius—­the nobleness of his views—­
and the happiness that has been the result of these
precious gifts. Then there is mention made of
his pleasure in being appointed Poet Laureate, and
of the rage and envy which that event excited in all
the habitations of the malignant. This is naturally
followed up by a full account of all his official
productions, and some modest doubts whether his genius
is not too heroic and pathetic for the composition
of an Epithalamium,—­ which doubts,
however, are speedily and pleasingly resolved by the
recollection, that as Spenser made a hymn on his own
marriage, so, there can be nothing improper in Mr.
Southey doing as much on that of the Princess Charlotte.
This is the general argument of the Proem. But
the reader must know a little more of the details.
In his early youth, the ingenious author says he aspired
to the fame of a poet; and then Fancy came to him,
and showed him the glories of his future career, addressing
him in these encouraging words—­

Thou whom rich Nature at thy happy birth
Blest in her bounty with the largest dower
That Heaven indulges to a child of earth!

Being fully persuaded of the truth of her statements,
we have then the satisfaction of learning that he
has lived a very happy life; and that, though time
has made his hair a little grey, it has only matured
his understanding; and that he is still as habitually
cheerful as when he was a boy. He then proceeds
to inform us, that he sometimes does a little in poetry
still; but that, of late years, he spends most of his
time in writing histories—­from which he
has no doubt that he will one day or another acquire
great reputation.

Thus in the ages which are past I live,
And those which are to come my sure reward
will give....

We come next, of course, to the Dream; and nothing
more stupid or heavy, we will venture to say, ever
arose out of sleep, or tended to sleep again.
The unhappy Laureate, it seems, just saw, upon shutting
his eyes, what he might have seen as well if he had
been able to keep them open—­a great crowd
of people and coaches in the street, with marriage
favours in their bosoms; church bells ringing merrily,
and feux-de-joie firing in all directions.
Eftsoons, says the dreaming poet, I came to a great
door, where there were guards placed to keep off the
mob; but when they saw my Laurel crown, they made
way for me, and let me in!—­

But I had entrance through that guarded
door,
In honour to the Laureate crown I wore.

When he gets in, he finds himself in a large hall,
decorated with trophies, and pictures, and statues,
commemorating the triumphs of British valour, from
Aboukir to Waterloo. The room, moreover, was filled
with a great number of ladies and gentlemen very finely
dressed; and in two chairs, near the top, were seated
the Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold. Hitherto,
certainly, all is sufficiently plain and probable;—­

Page 26

nor can the Muse who dictated this to the slumbering
Laureate be accused of any very extravagant or profuse
invention. We come, now, however, to allegory
and learning in abundance. In the first place,
we are told, with infinite regard to the probability
as well as the novelty of the fiction, that in this
drawing-room there were two great lions couching at
the feet of the Royal Pair;—­the Prince’s
being very lean and in poor condition, with the hair
rubbed off his neck as if from a heavy collar—­
and the Princess’s in full vigour, with a bushy
mane, and littered with torn French flags. Then
there were two heavenly figures stationed on each
side of the throne, one called Honour, and the other
Faith;—­so very like each other, that it
was impossible not to suppose them brother and sister.
It turns out, however, that they were only second cousins;
or so at least we interpret the following precious
piece of theogony.

Akin they were,—­yet not
as thus it seemed,
For he of VALOUR was the eldest son,
From Arete in happy union sprung.
But her to Phronis Eusebeia bore,
She whom her mother Dice sent to earth;
What marvel then if thus their features wore
Resemblant lineaments of kindred birth?
Dice being child of Him who rules above,
VALOUR his earth-born son; so both derived from
Jove.
p.
29.

This, we think, is delicious; but there is still more
goodly stuff toward. The two heavenly cousins
stand still without doing any thing; but then there
is a sound of sweet music, and a whole “heavenly
company” appear, led on by a majestic female,
whom we discover, by the emblems on our halfpence,
to be no less a person than Britannia, who advances
and addresses a long discourse of flattery and admonition
to the Royal bride; which, for the most part, is as
dull and commonplace as might be expected from the
occasion; though there are some passages in which the
author has reconciled his gratitude to his Patron,
and his monitory duty to his Daughter, with singular
spirit and delicacy. After enjoining to her the
observance of all public duties, and the cultivation
of all domestic virtues, Britannia is made to sum
up the whole sermon in this emphatic precept—­

Look to thy Sire, and in his steady way
—­learn thou to tread.

Now, considering that Mr. Southey was at all events
incapable of sacrificing truth to Court favour, it
cannot but be regarded as a rare felicity in his subject,
that he could thus select a pattern of private purity
and public honour in the person of the actual Sovereign,
without incurring the least suspicion either of base
adulation or lax morality....

Page 27

It is impossible to feel any serious or general contempt
for a person of Mr. Southey’s genius;—­and,
in reviewing his other works, we hope we have shown
a proper sense of his many merits and accomplishments.
But his Laureate odes are utterly and intolerably
bad; and, if he had never written any thing else,
must have ranked him below Colley Cibber in genius,
and above him in conceit and presumption. We have
no toleration for this sort of perversity, or prostitution
of great gifts; and do not think it necessary to qualify
the expression of opinions which we have formed with
as much positiveness as deliberation.—­We
earnestly wish he would resign his livery laurel to
Lord Thurlow, and write no more odes on Court galas.
We can assure him too, most sincerely, that this wish
is not dictated in any degree by envy, or any other
hostile or selfish feeling. We are ourselves,
it is but too well known, altogether without pretensions
to that high office—­and really see no great
charms either in the salary or the connexion—­and,
for the glory of writing such verses as we have now
been reviewing, we do not believe that there is a
scribbler in the kingdom so vile as to think it a thing
to be coveted.

ON THOMAS MOORE

A singular sweetness and melody of versification,—­smooth,
copious, and familiar diction,—­with some
brilliancy of fancy, and some show of classical erudition,
might have raised Mr. Moore to an innocent distinction
among the song-writers and occasional poets of his
day: But he is indebted, we fear, for the celebrity
he actually enjoys to accomplishments of a different
description; and may boast, if the boast can please
him, of being the most licentious of modern versifiers,
and the most poetical of those who, in our times,
have devoted their talents to the propagation of immorality.
We regard his book, indeed, as a public nuisance;
and would willingly trample it down by one short movement
of contempt and indignation, had we not reason to apprehend,
that it was abetted by patrons who are entitled to
a more respectful remonstrance, and by admirers who
may require a more extended exposition of their dangers.

There is nothing, it will be allowed, more indefensible
than a cold-blooded attempt to corrupt the purity
of an innocent heart; and we can scarcely conceive
any being more truly despicable, than he who, without
the apology of unruly passion or tumultuous desires,
sits down to ransack the impure places of his memory
for inflammatory images and expressions, and commits
them laboriously to writing, for the purpose of insinuating
pollution into the minds of unknown and unsuspecting
readers.

Page 28

This is almost a new crime among us. While France
has to blush for so many tomes of “Poesies Erotiques,”
we have little to answer for, but the coarse indecencies
of Rochester and Dryden; and these, though sufficiently
offensive to delicacy and good taste, can scarcely
be regarded as dangerous. There is an antidote
to the poison they contain, in the open and undisguised
profligacy with which it is presented. If they
are wicked, they have the honesty at least to profess
wickedness. The mark of the beast is set visibly
on their foreheads; and though they have the boldness
to recommend vice, they want the effrontery to make
her pass for virtue. In their grossest immoralities,
too, they scarcely ever seem to be perfectly in earnest;
and appear neither to wish nor to hope to make proselytes.
They indulge their own vein of gross riot and debauchery;
but they do not seek to corrupt the principles of their
readers; and are contented to be reprobated as profligate,
if they are admired at the same time for wit and originality.

The immorality of Mr. Moore is infinitely more insidious
and malignant. It seems to be his aim to impose
corruption upon his readers, by concealing it under
the mask of refinement; to reconcile them imperceptibly
to the most vile and vulgar sensuality, by blending
its language with that of exalted feeling and tender
emotion; and to steal impurity into their hearts,
by gently perverting the most simple and generous
of their affections. In the execution of this
unworthy task, he labours with a perseverance at once
ludicrous and detestable. He may be seen in every
page running round the paltry circle of his seductions
with incredible zeal and anxiety, and stimulating his
jaded fancy for new images of impurity, with as much
melancholy industry as ever outcast of the muses hunted
for epithets or metre.

It is needless, we hope, to go deep into the inquiry,
why certain compositions have been reprobated as licentious,
and their authors ranked among the worst enemies of
morality. The criterion by which their delinquency
may be determined, is fortunately very obvious:
no scene can be tolerated in description, which could
not be contemplated in reality, without a gross violation
of propriety: no expression can be pardoned in
poetry to which delicacy could not listen in the prose
of real life.

No writer can transgress those limits, and be held
guiltless; but there are degrees of guiltiness, and
circumstances of aggravation or apology, which ought
not to be disregarded. A poet of a luxuriant imagination
may give too warm a colouring to the representation
of innocent endearments, or be betrayed into indelicacies
in delineating the allurements of some fair seducer,
while it is obviously his general intention to give
attraction to the picture of virtue, and to put the
reader on his guard against the assault of temptation.
Mr. Moore has no such apology;—­he takes
care to intimate to us, in every page that the raptures

Page 29

which he celebrates do not spring from the excesses
of an innocent love, or the extravagance of a romantic
attachment; but are the unhallowed fruits of cheap
and vulgar prostitution, the inspiration of casual
amours, and the chorus of habitual debauchery.
He is at pains to let the world know that he is still
fonder of roving, than of loving; and that all the
Caras and the Fannys, with whom he holds dalliance
in these pages, have had each a long series of preceding
lovers, as highly favoured as their present poetical
paramour: that they meet without any purpose of
constancy, and do not think it necessary to grace
their connexion with any professions of esteem or
permanent attachment. The greater part of the
book is filled with serious and elaborate description
of the ecstasies of such an intercourse, and with
passionate exhortations to snatch the joys, which
are thus abundantly poured forth from “the fertile
fount of sense.”

To us, indeed, the perpetual kissing, and twining,
and panting of these amorous persons, is rather ludicrous
than seductive; and their eternal sobbing and whining,
raises no emotion in our bosoms, but those of disgust
and contempt. Even to younger men, we believe,
the book will not be very dangerous: nor is it
upon their account that we feel the indignation and
alarm which we have already endeavoured to express.
The life and conversation of our sex, we are afraid
is seldom so pure as to leave them much to learn from
publications of this description; and they commonly
know enough of the reality, to be aware of the absurd
illusions and exaggerations of such poetical voluptuaries.
In them, therefore, such a composition can work neither
corruption nor deception; and it will, in general,
be despised and thrown aside, as a tissue of sickly
and fantastical conceits, equally remote from truth
and respectability. It is upon the other sex,
that we conceive its effects may be most pernicious;
and it is chiefly as an insult upon their delicacy,
and an attack upon their purity, that we are disposed
to resent its publication.

The reserve in which women are educated; the natural
vivacity of their imaginations; and the warmth of
their sensibility, renders them peculiarly liable
to be captivated by the appearance of violent emotions,
and to be misled by the affectation of tenderness or
generosity. They easily receive any impression
that is made under the apparent sanction of these
feelings; and allow themselves to be seduced into
any thing, which they can be persuaded is dictated
by disinterested attachment, and sincere and excessive
love. It is easy to perceive how dangerous it
must be for such beings to hang over the pages of a
book, in which supernatural raptures, and transcendent
passion, are counterfeited in every page; in which,
images of voluptuousness are artfully blended with
expressions of refined sentiment, and delicate emotion;
and the grossest sensuality is exhibited in conjunction
with the most gentle and generous affections.
They who have not learned from experience, the impossibility
of such an union, are apt to be captivated by its
alluring exterior. They are seduced by their own
ignorance and sensibility; and become familiar with
the demon, for the sake of the radiant angel to whom
he has been linked by the malignant artifice of the
poet.

Page 30

We have been induced to enter this strong protest,
and to express ourselves thus warmly against this
and the former publications of this author, both from
what we hear of the circulation which they have already
obtained, and from our conviction that they are calculated,
if not strongly denounced to the public, to produce,
at this moment, peculiar and irremediable mischief.
The style of composition, as we have already hinted,
is almost new in this country: it is less offensive
than the old fashion of obscenity; and for these reasons,
perhaps, is less likely to excite the suspicion of
the moralist, or to become the object of precaution
to those who watch over the morals of the young and
inexperienced. We certainly have known it a permitted
study, where performances, infinitely less pernicious,
were rigidly interdicted.

There can be no time in which the purity of the female
character can fail to be of the first importance to
every community; but it appears to us, that it requires
at this moment to be more carefully watched over than
at any other; and that the constitution of society
has arrived among us to a sort of crisis, the issue
of which may be powerfully influenced by our present
neglect or solicitude. From the increasing diffusion
of opulence, enlightened or polite society is greatly
enlarged, and necessarily becomes more promiscuous
and corruptible; and women are now beginning to receive
a more extended education, to venture more freely
and largely into the fields of literature, and to become
more of intellectual and independent creatures, than
they have yet been in these islands. In these
circumstances, it seems to be of incalculable importance,
that no attaint should be given to the delicacy and
purity of their expanding minds; that their increasing
knowledge should be of good chiefly, and not of evil;
that they should not consider modesty as one of the
prejudices from which they are now to be emancipated;
nor found any part of their new influence upon the
licentiousness of which Mr. Moore invites them to
be partakers. The character and the morality
of women exercises already a mighty influence upon
the happiness and the respectability of the nation;
and it is destined, we believe, to exercise a still
higher one: But if they should ever cease to be
the pure, the delicate, and timid creatures that they
now are—­if they should cease to overawe
profligacy, and to win and to shame men into decency,
fidelity, and love of unsullied virtue—­it
is easy to see that this influence, which has hitherto
been exerted to strengthen and refine our society,
will operate entirely to its corruption and debasement;
that domestic happiness and private honour will be
extinguished, and public spirit and national industry
most probably annihilated along with them.

Page 31

There is one other consideration which has helped
to excite our apprehension on occasion of this particular
performance. Many of the pieces are dedicated
to persons of the first consideration in the country,
both for rank and accomplishments; and the author appears
to consider the greater part of them as his intimate
friends, and undoubted patrons and admirers.
Now, this we will confess is to us a very alarming
consideration. By these channels, the book will
easily pass into circulation in those classes of society,
which it is of most consequence to keep free of contamination;
and from which its reputation and its influence will
descend with the greatest effect to the great body
of the community. In this reading and opulent
country, there are no fashions which diffuse themselves
so fast, as those of literature and immorality:
there is no palpable boundary between the noblesse
and the bourgeoisie, as in old France, by which
the corruption and intelligence of the former can
be prevented from spreading to the latter. All
the parts of the mass, act and react upon each other
with a powerful and unintermitted agency; and if the
head be once infected, the corruption will spread
irresistibly through the whole body. It is doubly
necessary, therefore, to put the law in force against
this delinquent, since he has not only indicated a
disposition to do mischief, but seems unfortunately
to have found an opportunity.

ON WORDSWORTH’S “THE
EXCURSION”

[From The Edinburgh Review, November, 1814]

The Excursion, being a portion of the Recluse,
a Poem. By WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 4to. pp. 447.
London, 1814.

This will never do. It bears no doubt the stamp
of the author’s heart and fancy; but unfortunately
not half so visibly as that of his peculiar system.
His former poems were intended to recommend that system,
and to bespeak favour for it by their individual merit;—­but
this, we suspect, must be recommended by the system—­and
can only expect to succeed where it has been previously
established. It is longer, weaker, and tamer,
than any of Mr. Wordsworth’s other productions;
with less boldness of originality, and less even of
that extreme simplicity and lowliness of tone which
wavered so prettily, in the Lyrical Ballads, between
silliness and pathos. We have imitations of Cowper,
and even of Milton here, engrafted on the natural
drawl of the Lakers—­and all diluted into
harmony by that profuse and irrepressible wordiness
which deluges all the blank verse of this school of
poetry, and lubricates and weakens the whole structure
of their style.

Though it fairly fills four hundred and twenty good
quarto pages, without note, vignette, or any sort
of extraneous assistance, it is stated in the title—­with
something of an imprudent candour—­to be
but “a portion” of a larger work; and
in the preface, where an attempt is rather unsuccessfully
made to explain the whole design, it is still more
rashly disclosed, that it is but “a part of the
second part of a long and laborious work”—­which
is to consist of three parts.

Page 32

What Mr. Wordsworth’s ideas of length are, we
have no means of accurately judging; but we cannot
help suspecting that they are liberal, to a degree
that will alarm the weakness of most modern readers.
As far as we can gather from the preface, the entire
poem—­or one of them, for we really are
not sure whether there is to be one or two—­is
of a biographical nature; and is to contain the history
of the author’s mind, and of the origin and
progress of his poetical powers, up to the period
when they were sufficiently matured to qualify him
for the great work on which he has been so long employed.
Now, the quarto before us contains an account of one
of his youthful rambles in the vales of Cumberland,
and occupies precisely the period of three days; so
that, by the use of a very powerful calculus,
some estimate may be formed of the probable extent
of the entire biography.

This small specimen, however, and the statements with
which it is prefaced, have been sufficient to set
our minds at rest in one particular. The case
of Mr. Wordsworth, we perceive, is now manifestly
hopeless; and we give him up as altogether incurable,
and beyond the power of criticism. We cannot
indeed altogether omit taking precautions now and
then against the spreading of the malady;—­but
for himself, though we shall watch the progress of
his symptoms as a matter of professional curiosity
and instruction, we really think it right not to harass
him any longer with nauseous remedies,—­but
rather to throw in cordials and lenitives, and wait
in patience for the natural termination of the disorder.
In order to justify this desertion of our patient,
however, it is proper to state why we despair of the
success of a more active practice.

A man who has been for twenty years at work on such
matter as is now before us, and who comes complacently
forward with a whole quarto of it after all the admonitions
he has received, cannot reasonably be expected to
“change his hand, or check his pride,”
upon the suggestion of far weightier monitors than
we can pretend to be. Inveterate habit must now
have given a kind of sanctity to the errors of early
taste; and the very powers of which we lament the
perversion, have probably become incapable of any
other application. The very quantity, too, that
he has written, and is at this moment working up for
publication upon the old pattern, makes it almost
hopeless to look for any change of it. All this
is so much capital already sunk in the concern; which
must be sacrificed if it be abandoned: and no
man likes to give up for lost the time and talent
and labour which he has embodied in any permanent production.
We were not previously aware of these obstacles to
Mr. Wordsworth’s conversion; and, considering
the peculiarities of his former writings merely as
the result of certain wanton and capricious experiments
on public taste and indulgence, conceived it to be
our duty to discourage their repetition by all the
means in our power. We now see clearly, however,

Page 33

how the case stands;—­and, making up our
minds, though with the most sincere pain and reluctance,
to consider him as finally lost to the good cause of
poetry, shall endeavour to be thankful for the occasional
gleams of tenderness and beauty which the natural
force of his imagination and affections must still
shed over all his productions,—­and to which
we shall ever turn with delight, in spite of the affectation
and mysticism and prolixity, with which they are so
abundantly contrasted.

Long habits of seclusion, and an excessive ambition
of originality, can alone account for the disproportion
which seems to exist between this author’s taste
and his genius; or for the devotion with which he has
sacrificed so many precious gifts at the shrine of
those paltry idols which he has set up for himself
among his lakes and his mountains. Solitary musings,
amidst such scenes, might no doubt be expected to
nurse up the mind to the majesty of poetical conception,—­(though
it is remarkable, that all the greater poets lived
or had lived, in the full current of society):—­But
the collision of equal minds,—­the admonition
of prevailing impressions—­seems necessary
to reduce its redundancies, and repress that tendency
to extravagance or puerility, into which the self-indulgence
and self-admiration of genius is so apt to be betrayed,
when it is allowed to wanton, without awe or restraint,
in the triumph and delight of its own intoxication.
That its flights should be graceful and glorious in
the eyes of men, it seems almost to be necessary that
they should be made in the consciousness that men’s
eyes are to behold them,—­and that the inward
transport and vigour by which they are inspired, should
be tempered by an occasional reference to what will
be thought of them by those-ultimate dispensers of
glory. An habitual and general knowledge of the
few settled and permanent maxims, which form the canon
of general taste in all large and polished societies—­a
certain tact, which informs us at once that many things,
which we still love and are moved by in secret, must
necessarily be despised as childish, or derided as
absurd, in all such societies—­though it
will not stand in the place of genius, seems necessary
to the success of its exertions; and though it will
never enable any one to produce the higher beauties
of art, can alone secure the talent which does produce
them, from errors that must render it useless.
Those who have most of the talent, however, commonly
acquire this knowledge with the greatest facility;—­and
if Mr. Wordsworth, instead of confining himself almost
entirely to the society of the dalesmen and cottagers,
and little children, who form the subjects of his
book, had condescended to mingle a little more with
the people that were to read and judge of it, we cannot
help thinking, that its texture would have been considerably
improved: At least it appears to us to be absolutely
impossible, that any one who had lived or mixed familiarly
with men of literature and ordinary judgment in poetry

Page 34

(of course we exclude the coadjutors and disciples
of his own school), could ever have fallen into such
gross faults, or so long mistaken them for beauties.
His first essays we looked upon in a good degree as
poetical paradoxes,—­maintained experimentally,
in order to display talent, and court notoriety;—­and
so maintained, with no more serious belief in their
truth, than is usually generated by an ingenious and
animated defence of other paradoxes. But when
we find, that he has been for twenty years exclusively
employed upon articles of this very fabric, and that
he has still enough of raw material on hand to keep
him so employed for twenty years to come, we cannot
refuse him the justice of believing that he is a sincere
convert to his own system, and must ascribe the peculiarities
of his composition, not to any transient affectation,
or accidental caprice of imagination, but to a settled
perversity of taste or understanding, which has been
fostered, if not altogether created, by the circumstances
to which we have already alluded.

The volume before us, if we were to describe it very
shortly, we should characterize as a tissue of moral
and devotional ravings, in which innumerable changes
are rung upon a few very simple and familiar ideas:
—­but with such an accompaniment of long
words, long sentences, and unwieldy phrases—­such
a hubbub of strained raptures and fantastical sublimities,
that it is often extremely difficult for the most skilful
and attentive student to obtain a glimpse of the author’s
meaning—­and altogether impossible for an
ordinary reader to conjecture what he is about.
Moral and religious enthusiasm, though undoubtedly
poetical emotions, are at the same time but dangerous
inspirers of poetry; nothing being so apt to run into
interminable dulness or mellifluous extravagance,
without giving the unfortunate author the slightest
intimation of his danger. His laudable zeal for
the efficacy of his preachments, he very naturally
mistakes for the ardour of poetical inspiration;—­and,
while dealing out the high words and glowing phrases
which are so readily supplied by themes of this description,
can scarcely avoid believing that he is eminently
original and impressive:—­ All sorts of
commonplace notions and expressions are sanctified
in his eyes, by the sublime ends for which they are
employed; and the mystical verbiage of the methodist
pulpit is repeated, till the speaker entertains no
doubt that he is the elected organ of divine truth
and persuasion. But if such be the common hazards
of seeking inspiration from those potent fountains,
it may easily be conceived what chance Mr. Wordsworth
had of escaping their enchantment,—­with
his natural propensities to wordiness, and his unlucky
habit of debasing pathos with vulgarity. The
fact accordingly is, that in this production he is
more obscure than a Pindaric poet of the seventeenth
century; and more verbose “than even himself
of yore”; while the wilfulness with which he

Page 35

persists in choosing his examples of intellectual dignity
and tenderness exclusively from the lowest ranks of
society, will be sufficiently apparent, from the circumstance
of his having thought fit to make his chief prolocutor
in this poetical dialogue, and chief advocate of Providence
and Virtue, an old Scotch Pedlar—­retired
indeed from business—­but still rambling
about in his former haunts, and gossiping among his
old customers, without his pack on his shoulders.
The other persons of the drama are, a retired military
chaplain, who has grown half an atheist and half a
misanthrope—­the wife of an unprosperous
weaver—­a servant girl with her infant—­a
parish pauper, and one or two other personages of
equal rank and dignity.

The character of the work is decidedly didactic; and
more than nine-tenths of it are occupied with a species
of dialogue, or rather a series of long sermons or
harangues which pass between the pedlar, the author,
the old chaplain, and a worthy vicar, who entertains
the whole party at dinner on the last day of their
excursion. The incidents which occur in the course
of it are as few and trifling as can be imagined;—­and
those which the different speakers narrate in the
course of their discourses, are introduced rather
to illustrate their arguments or opinions, than for
any interest they are supposed to possess of their
own.—­The doctrine which the work is intended
to enforce, we are by no means certain that we have
discovered. In so far as we can collect, however,
it seems to be neither more nor less than the old familiar
one, that a firm belief in the providence of a wise
and beneficent Being must be our great stay and support
under all afflictions and perplexities upon earth—­and
that there are indications of his power and goodness
in all the aspects of the visible universe, whether
living or inanimate—­every part of which
should therefore be regarded with love and reverence,
as exponents of those great attributes. We can
testify, at least, that these salutary and important
truths are inculcated at far greater length, and with
more repetitions, than in any ten volumes of sermons
that we ever perused. It is also maintained, with
equal conciseness and originality, that there is frequently
much good sense, as well as much enjoyment, in the
humbler conditions of life; and that, in spite of
great vices and abuses, there is a reasonable allowance
both of happiness and goodness in society at large.
If there be any deeper or more recondite doctrines
in Mr. Wordsworth’s book, we must confess that
they have escaped us;—­and, convinced as
we are of the truth and soundness of those to which
we have alluded, we cannot help thinking that they
might have been better enforced with less parade and
prolixity. His effusions on what may be called
the physiognomy of external nature, or its moral and
theological expression, are eminently fantastic, obscure,
and affected.—­It is quite time, however,
that we should give the reader a more particular account
of this singular performance.

Page 36

It opens with a picture of the author toiling across
a bare common in a hot summer day, and reaching at
last a ruined hut surrounded with tall trees, where
he meets by appointment with a hale old man, with an
iron-pointed staff lying beside him. Then follows
a retrospective account of their first acquaintance—­formed,
it seems, when the author was at a village school;
and his aged friend occupied “one room,—­the
fifth part of a house” in the neighbourhood.
After this, we have the history of this reverend person
at no small length. He was born, we are happy
to find, in Scotland—­among the hills of
Athol; and his mother, after his father’s death,
married the parish schoolmaster—­so that
he was taught his letters betimes: But then,
as it is here set forth with much solemnity,

From his sixth year, the boy, of whom
I speak,
In summer, tended cattle on
the hills.

And again, a few pages after, that there may be no
risk of mistake as to a point of such essential importance—­

From early childhood, even, as hath been
said,
From his sixth year, he had been
sent abroad,In summer, to tend herds:
Such was his task!

In the course of this occupation, it is next recorded,
that he acquired such a taste for rural scenery and
open air, that when he was sent to teach a school
in a neighbouring village, he found it “a misery
to him,” and determined to embrace the more
romantic occupation of a Pedlar—­or, as
Mr. Wordsworth more musically expresses it,

A vagrant merchant bent beneath his load;

—­and in the course of his peregrinations
had acquired a very large acquaintance, which, after
he had given up dealing, he frequently took a summer
ramble to visit. The author, on coming up to
this interesting personage, finds him sitting with
his eyes half shut;—­and, not being quite
sure whether he’s asleep or awake, stands “some
minutes space” in silence beside him. “At
length,” says he, with his own delightful simplicity—­

At length I hailed him—­seeing
that his hat
Was moist with water-drops, as if
the brim
Had newly scooped a running stream!—­
—­“’Tis,” said I,
“a burning day;
My lips are parched with thirst;—­but
you, I guess,
Have somewhere found relief.”

Upon this, the benevolent old man points him out a
well in a corner, to which the author repairs; and,
after minutely describing its situation, beyond a
broken wall, and between two alders that “grew
in a cold damp nook,” he thus faithfully chronicles
the process of his return—­

My thirst I slaked—­and from
the cheerless spot
Withdrawing, straightway to the shade
returned,
Where sate the old man on the cottage
bench.

Page 37

The Pedlar then gives an account of the last inhabitants
of the deserted cottage beside them. These were,
a good industrious weaver and his wife and children.
They were very happy for a while; till sickness and
want of work came upon them; and then the father enlisted
as a soldier, and the wife pined in the lonely cottage—­growing
every year more careless and desponding, as her anxiety
and fears for her absent husband, of whom no tidings
ever reached her, accumulated. Her children died,
and left her cheerless and alone; and at last she
died also; and the cottage fell to decay. We
must say, that there is very considerable pathos in
the telling of this simple story; and that they who
can get over the repugnance excited by the triteness
of its incidents, and the lowness of its objects,
will not fail to be struck with the author’s
knowledge of the human heart, and the power he possesses
of stirring up its deepest and gentlest sympathies.
His prolixity, indeed, it is not so easy to get over.
This little story fills about twenty-five quarto pages;
and abounds, of course, with mawkish sentiment, and
details of preposterous minuteness. When the
tale is told, the travellers take their staffs, and
end their first day’s journey, without further
adventure, at a little inn.

The Second book sets them forward betimes in the morning.
They pass by a Village Wake; and as they approach
a more solitary part of the mountains, the old man
tells the author that he is taking him to see an old
friend of his, who had formerly been chaplain to a
Highland regiment—­had lost a beloved wife—­been
roused from his dejection by the first euthusiasm
[Transcriber’s note: sic] of the French
Revolution—­had emigrated on its miscarriage
to America—­and returned disgusted to hide
himself in the retreat to which they were now ascending.
That retreat is then most tediously described—­a
smooth green valley in the heart of the mountain,
without trees, and with only one dwelling. Just
as they get sight of it from the ridge above, they
see a funeral train proceeding from the solitary abode,
and hurry on with some apprehension for the fate of
the misanthrope—­whom they find, however,
in very tolerable condition at the door, and learn
that the funeral was that of an aged pauper who had
been boarded out by the parish in that cheap farm-house,
and had died in consequence of long exposure to heavy
rain. The old chaplain, or, as Mr. Wordsworth
is pleased to call him, the Solitary, tells this dull
story at prodigious length; and after giving an inflated
description of an effect of mountain-mists in the evening
sun, treats his visitors with a rustic dinner—­and
they walk out to the fields at the close of the second
book.

The Third makes no progress in the excursion.
It is entirely filled with moral and religious conversation
and debate, and with a more ample detail of the Solitary’s
past life, than had been given in the sketch of his
friend. The conversation is exceedingly dull and
mystical; and the Solitary’s confessions insufferably
diffuse. Yet there is very considerable force
of writing and tenderness of sentiment in this part
of the work.

Page 38

The Fourth book is also filled with dialogues ethical
and theological; and, with the exception of some brilliant
and forcible expressions here and there, consists
of an exposition of truisms, more cloudy, wordy, and
inconceivably prolix, than any thing we ever met with.

In the beginning of the Fifth book, they leave the
solitary valley, taking its pensive inhabitant along
with them, and stray on to where the landscape sinks
down into milder features, till they arrive at a church,
which stands on a moderate elevation in the centre
of a wide and fertile vale. Here they meditate
for a while among the monuments, till the vicar comes
out and joins them;—­and recognizing the
pedlar for an old acquaintance, mixes graciously in
the conversation, which proceeds in a very edifying
manner till the close of the book.

The Sixth contains a choice obituary, or characteristic
account of several of the persons who lie buried before
this groupe of moralizers; —­an unsuccessful
lover, who finds consolation in natural history—­a
miner, who worked on for twenty years, in despite of
universal ridicule, and at last found the vein he
had expected—­two political enemies reconciled
in old age to each other—­an old female miser—­a
seduced damsel—­and two widowers, one who
devoted himself to the education of his daughters,
and one who married a prudent middle-aged woman to
take care of them.

In the beginning of the Eighth Book, the worthy vicar
expresses, in the words of Mr. Wordsworth’s
own epitome, “his apprehensions that he had
detained his auditors too long—­invites them
to his house—­Solitary, disinclined to comply,
rallies the Wanderer, and somewhat playfully draws
a comparison between his itinerant profession and that
of a knight-errant—­which leads to the Wanderer
giving an account of changes in the country, from
the manufacturing spirit—­Its favourable
effects—­ The other side of the picture,”
etc., etc. After these very poetical
themes are exhausted, they all go into the house, where
they are introduced to the Vicar’s wife and
daughter; and while they sit chatting in the parlour
over a family dinner, his son and one of his companions
come in with a fine dish of trouts piled on a blue
slate; and, after being caressed by the company, are
sent to dinner in the nursery.—­This ends
the eighth book.

The Ninth and last is chiefly occupied with the mystical
discourses of the Pedlar; who maintains, that the
whole universe is animated by an active principle,
the noblest seat of which is in the human soul; and
moreover, that the final end of old age is to train
and enable us

To hear the mighty stream of Tendency
Uttering, for elevation of our thought,
A clear sonorous voice, inaudible
To the vast multitude whose doom it is
To run the giddy round of vain delight—­

Page 39

with other matters as luminous and emphatic.
The hostess at length breaks off the harangue, by
proposing that they should all make a little excursion
on the lake,—­and they embark accordingly;
and, after navigating for some time along its shores,
and drinking tea on a little island, land at last
on a remote promontory, from which they see the sun
go down,—­and listen to a solemn and pious,
but rather long prayer from the Vicar. They then
walk back to the parsonage door, where the author
and his friend propose to spend the evening;—­but
the Solitary prefers walking back in the moonshine
to his own valley, after promising to take another
ramble with them—­

If time, with free consent, be yours to
give,
And season favours.

—­And here the publication somewhat abruptly
closes.

Our abstract of the story has been so extremely concise,
that it is more than usually necessary for us to lay
some specimens of the work itself before our readers.
Its grand staple, as we have already said, consists
of a kind of mystical morality: and the chief
characteristics of the style are, that it is prolix
and very frequently unintelligible: and though
we are very sensible that no great gratification is
to be expected from the exhibition of those qualities,
yet it is necessary to give our readers a taste of
them, both to justify the sentence we have passed,
and to satisfy them that it was really beyond our power
to present them with any abstract or intelligible
account of those long conversations which we have
had so much occasion to notice in our brief sketch
of its contents.

* * * *
*

There is no beauty, we think, it must be admitted,
in such passages; and so little either of interest
or curiosity in the incidents they disclose, that
we can scarcely conceive that any man to whom they
had actually occurred, should take the trouble to
recount them to his wife and children by his idle
fireside—­but, that man or child should think
them worth writing down in blank verse, and printing
in magnificent quarto, we should certainly have supposed
altogether impossible, had it not been for the ample
proofs which Mr. Wordsworth has afforded to the contrary.

Sometimes their silliness is enhanced by a paltry
attempt at effect and emphasis:—­as in the
following account of that very touching and extraordinary
occurrence of a lamb bleating among the mountains.
The poet would actually persuade us that he thought
the mountains themselves were bleating;—­and
that nothing could be so grand or impressive.
“List!” cries the old Pedlar, suddenly
breaking off in the middle of one of his daintiest
ravings—­

—­“List!—­I
heard,
From yon huge breast of rock, a solemn
bleat;
Sent forth as if it were the Mountain’s
voice!
As if the visible Mountain made the cry!
Again!”—­The effect upon
the soul was such
As he expressed; for, from the Mountain’s
heart
The solemn bleat appeared to come; there
was
No other—­and the region all
around
Stood silent, empty of all shape of life.
—­It was a lamb—­left somewhere
to itself!

Page 40

What we have now quoted will give the reader a notion
of the taste and spirit in which this volume is composed;
and yet, if it had not contained something a good
deal better, we do not know how we should have been
justified in troubling him with any account of it.
But the truth is, that Mr. Wordsworth, with all his
perversities, is a person of great powers; and has
frequently a force in his moral declamations, and
a tenderness in his pathetic narratives, which neither
his prolixity nor his affectation can altogether deprive
of their effect.

* * * *
*

Besides those more extended passages of interest or
beauty, which we have quoted, and omitted to quote,
there are scattered up and down the book, and in the
midst of its most repulsive portions, a very great
number of single lines and images, that sparkle like
gems in the desart, and startle us with an intimation
of the great poetic powers that lie buried in the
rubbish that has been heaped around them. It is
difficult to pick up these, after we have once passed
them by; but we shall endeavour to light upon one
or two. The beneficial effect of intervals of
relaxation and pastime on youthful minds, is finely
expressed, we think, in a single line, when it is
said to be—­

Like vernal ground to Sabbath sunshine
left.

The following image of the bursting forth of a mountain-spring,
seems to us also to be conceived with great elegance
and beauty.

And a few steps may bring us to the spot,
Where haply crown’d with flowrets
and green herbs;
The Mountain Infant to the Sun comes forth
Like human life from darkness.—­

The ameliorating effects of song and music on the
minds which most delight in them, are likewise very
poetically expressed.

—­And when the stream
Which overflowed the soul was passed away,
A consciousness remained that it had left,
Deposited upon the silent shore
Of Memory, images and precious thoughts,
That shall not die, and cannot be destroyed.

Nor is any thing more elegant than the representation
of the graceful tranquillity occasionally put on by
one of the author’s favourites; who, though
gay and airy, in general—­

Was graceful, when it pleased him, smooth
and still
As the mute Swan that floats adown the
stream,
Or on the waters of th’ unruffled
lake
Anchored her placid beauty. Not a
leaf
That flutters on the bough more light
than he,
And not a flower that droops in the green
shade,
More winningly reserved.—­

Nor are there wanting morsels of a sterner and more
majestic beauty; as when, assuming the weightier diction
of Cowper, he says, in language which the hearts of
all readers of modern history must have responded—­

—­Earth
is sick,
And Heaven is weary of the hollow words
Which States and Kingdoms utter when they
speak
Of Truth and Justice.

Page 41

These examples, we perceive, are not very well chosen—­but
we have not leisure to improve the selection; and,
such as they are, they may serve to give the reader
a notion of the sort of merit which we meant to illustrate
by their citation.—­When we look back to
them, indeed, and to the other passages which we have
now extracted, we feel half inclined to rescind the
severe sentence which we passed on the work at the
beginning:—­But when we look into the work
itself, we perceive that it cannot be rescinded.
Nobody can be more disposed to do justice to the great
powers of Mr. Wordsworth than we are; and, from the
first time that he came before us, down to the present
moment, we have uniformly testified in their favour,
and assigned indeed our high sense of their value
as the chief ground of the bitterness with which we
resented their perversion. That perversion, however,
is now far more visible than their original dignity;
and while we collect the fragments, it is impossible
not to lament the ruins from which we are condemned
to pick them. If any one should doubt of the
existence of such a perversion, or be disposed to
dispute about the instances we have hastily brought
forward, we would just beg leave to refer him to the
general plan and the characters of the poem now before
us.—­Why should Mr. Wordsworth have made
his hero a superannuated Pedlar? What but the
most wretched and provoking perversity of taste and
judgment, could induce any one to place his chosen
advocate of wisdom and virtue in so absurd and fantastic
a condition? Did Mr. Wordsworth really imagine,
that he favourite doctrines were likely to gain any
thing in point of effect or authority by being put
into the mouth of a person accustomed to higgle about
tape, or brass sleeve-buttons? Or is it not plain
that, independent of the ridicule and disgust which
such a personification must give to many of his readers,
its adoption exposes his work throughout to the charge
of revolting incongruity, and utter disregard of probability
or nature? For, after he has thus wilfully debased
his moral teacher by a low occupation, is there one
word that he puts into his mouth, or one sentiment
of which he makes him the organ, that has the most
remote reference to that occupation? Is there
any thing in his learned, abstracted, and logical
harangues, that savours of the calling that is ascribed
to him? Are any of their materials such as a pedlar
could possibly have dealt in? Are the manners,
the diction, the sentiments, in any, the very smallest
degree, accommodated to a person in that condition?
or are they not eminently and conspicuously such as
could not by possibility belong to it? A man
who went about selling flannel and pocket-handkerchiefs
in this lofty diction, would soon frighten away all
his customers; and would infallibly pass either for
a madman, or for some learned and affected gentleman,
who, in a frolic, had taken up a character which he
was peculiarly ill qualified for supporting.

Page 42

The absurdity in this case, we think, is palpable
and glaring; but it is exactly of the same nature
with that which infects the whole substance of the
work—­a puerile ambition of singularity engrafted
on an unlucky predilection for truisms; and an affected
passion for simplicity and humble life, most awkwardly
combined with a taste for mystical refinements, and
all the gorgeousness of obscure phraseology. His
taste for simplicity is evinced, by sprinkling up
and down his interminable declamations, a few descriptions
of baby-houses, and of old hats with wet brims; and
his amiable partiality for humble life, by assuring
us, that a wordy rhetorician, who talks about Thebes,
and allegorizes all the heathen mythology, was once
a pedlar—­and making him break in upon his
magnificent orations with two or three awkward notices
of something that he had seen when selling winter
raiment about the country—­or of the changes
in the state of society, which had almost annihilated
his former calling.

ON KEATS

2. Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and other
Poems. By JOHN KEATS, Author of Endymion.
12mo. pp. 200. London, 1820.

We had never happened to see either of these volumes
till very lately—­ and have been exceedingly
struck with the genius they display, and the spirit
of poetry which breathes through all their extravagance.
That imitation of our older writers, and especially
of our older dramatists, to which we cannot help flattering
ourselves that we have somewhat contributed, has brought
on, as it were, a second spring in our poetry; —­and
few of its blossoms are either more profuse of sweetness
or richer in promise, than this which is now before
us. Mr. Keats, we understand, is still a very
young man; and his whole works, indeed, bear evidence
enough of the fact. They are full of extravagance
and irregularity, rash attempts at originality, interminable
wanderings, and excessive obscurity. They manifestly
require, therefore, all the indulgence that can be
claimed for a first attempt:—­but we think
it no less plain that they deserve it; for they are
flushed all over with the rich lights of fancy, and
so coloured and bestrewn with the flowers of poetry,
that even while perplexed and bewildered in their
labyrinths, it is impossible to resist the intoxication
of their sweetness, or to shut our hearts to the enchantments
they so lavishly present. The models upon which
he has formed himself, in the Endymion, the earliest
and by much the most considerable of his poems, are
obviously the Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher, and
the Sad Shepherd of Ben Jonson;—­the exquisite
metres and inspired diction of which he has copied
with great boldness and fidelity—­and, like
his great originals, has also contrived to impart

Page 43

to the whole piece that true rural and poetical air
which breathes only in them and in Theocritus—­which
is at once homely and majestic, luxurious and rude,
and sets before us the genuine sights and sounds and
smells of the country, with all the magic and grace
of Elysium. His subject has the disadvantage
of being mythological; and in this respect, as well
as on account of the raised and rapturous tone it
consequently assumes, his poetry may be better compared
perhaps to the Comus and the Arcades of Milton, of
which, also, there are many traces of imitation.
The great distinction, however, between him and these
divine authors, is, that imagination in them is subordinate
to reason and judgment, while, with him, it is paramount
and supreme—­that their ornaments and images
are employed to embellish and recommend just sentiments,
engaging incidents, and natural characters, while his
are poured out without measure or restraint, and with
no apparent design but to unburden the breast of the
author, and give vent to the overflowing vein of his
fancy. The thin and scanty tissue of his story
is merely the light framework on which his florid
wreaths are suspended; and while his imaginations
go rambling and entangling themselves everywhere, like
wild honeysuckles, all idea of sober reason, and plan,
and consistency, is utterly forgotten, and is “strangled
in their waste fertility.” A great part
of the work, indeed, is written in the strangest and
most fantastical manner that can be imagined.
It seems as if the author had ventured everything
that occurred to him in the shape of a glittering
image or striking expression—­taken the first
word that presented itself to make up a rhyme, and
then made that word the germ of a new cluster of images—­a
hint for a new excursion of the fancy—­and
so wandered on, equally forgetful whence he came,
and heedless whither he was going, till he had covered
his pages with an interminable arabesque of connected
and incongruous figures, that multiplied as they extended,
and were only harmonized by the brightness of their
tints, and the graces of their forms. In this
rash and headlong career he has of course many lapses
and failures. There is no work, accordingly, from
which a malicious critic could cull more matter for
ridicule, or select more obscure, unnatural, or absurd
passages. But we do not take that to be
our office;—­and just beg leave, on the contrary,
to say, that any one who, on this account, would represent
the whole poem as despicable, must either have no
notion of poetry, or no regard to truth.

It is, in truth, at least as full of genius as of
absurdity; and he who does not find a great deal in
it to admire and to give delight, cannot in his heart
see much beauty in the two exquisite dramas to which
we have already alluded, or find any great pleasure
in some of the finest creations of Milton and Shakespeare.
There are very many such persons, we verily believe,
even among the reading and judicious part of the community—­correct

Page 44

scholars we have no doubt many of them, and, it may
be, very classical composers in prose and in verse—­but
utterly ignorant of the true genius of English poetry,
and incapable of estimating its appropriate and most
exquisite beauties. With that spirit we have no
hesitation in saying that Mr. K. is deeply imbued—­and
of those beauties he has presented us with many striking
examples. We are very much inclined indeed to
add, that we do not know any book which we would sooner
employ as a test to ascertain whether any one had in
him a native relish for poetry, and a genuine sensibility
to its intrinsic charm. The greater and more
distinguished poets of our country have so much else
in them to gratify other tastes and propensities,
that they are pretty sure to captivate and amuse those
to whom their poetry is but an hindrance and obstruction,
as well as those to whom it constitutes their chief
attraction. The interest of the stories they tell—­the
vivacity of the characters they delineate—­the
weight and force of the maxims and sentiments in which
they abound—­the very pathos and wit and
humour they display, which may all and each of them
exist apart from their poetry and independent of it,
are quite sufficient to account for their popularity,
without referring much to that still higher gift, by
which they subdue to their enchantments those whose
souls are attuned to the finer impulses of poetry.
It is only where those other recommendations are wanting,
or exist in a weaker degree, that the true force of
the attraction, exercised by the pure poetry with
which they are so often combined, can be fairly appreciated—­where,
without much incident or many characters, and with
little wit, wisdom, or arrangement, a number of bright
pictures are presented to the imagination, and a fine
feeling expressed of those mysterious relations by
which visible external things are assimilated with
inward thoughts and emotions, and become the images
and exponents of all passions and affections.
To an unpoetical reader such passages always appear
mere raving and absurdity—­and to this censure
a very great part of the volume before us will certainly
be exposed, with this class of readers. Even
in the judgment of a fitter audience, however, it
must, we fear, be admitted, that, besides the riot
and extravagance of his fancy, the scope and substance
of Mr. K.’s poetry is rather too dreary and
abstracted to excite the strongest interest, or to
sustain the attention through a work of any great
compass or extent. He deals too much with shadowy
and incomprehensible beings, and is too constantly
rapt into an extramundane Elysium, to command a lasting
interest with ordinary mortals—­and must
employ the agency of more varied and coarser emotions,
if he wishes to take rank with the seducing poets
of this or of former generations. There is something
very curious too, we think, in the way in which he,
and Mr. Barry Cornwall also, have dealt with the Pagan
mythology, of which they have made so much use in

Page 45

their poetry. Instead of presenting its imaginary
persons under the trite and vulgar traits that belong
to them in the ordinary systems, little more is borrowed
from these than the general conception of their conditions
and relations; and an original character and distinct
individuality is bestowed upon them, which has all
the merit of invention, and all the grace and attraction
of the fictions on which it is engrafted. The
antients, though they probably did not stand in any
great awe of their deities, have yet abstained very
much from any minute or dramatic representation of
their feelings and affections. In Hesiod and
Homer, they are coarsely delineated by some of their
actions and adventures, and introduced to us merely
as the agents in those particular transactions; while
in the Hymns, from those ascribed to Orpheus and Homer,
down to those of Callimachus, we have little but pompous
epithets and invocations, with a flattering commemoration
of their most famous exploits—­and are never
allowed to enter into their bosoms, or follow out
the train of their feelings, with the presumption
of our human sympathy. Except the love-song of
the Cyclops to his Sea Nymph in Theocritus—­the
Lamentation of Venus for Adonis in Moschus—­and
the more recent Legend of Apuleius, we scarcely recollect
a passage in all the writings of antiquity in which
the passions of an immortal are fairly disclosed to
the scrutiny and observation of men. The author
before us, however, and some of his contemporaries,
have dealt differently with the subject;—­and,
sheltering the violence of the fiction under the ancient
traditionary fable, have created and imagined an entire
new set of characters, and brought closely and minutely
before us the loves and sorrows and perplexities of
beings, with whose names and supernatural attributes
we had long been familiar, without any sense or feeling
of their personal character. We have more than
doubts of the fitness of such personages to maintain
a permanent interest with the modern public;—­but
the way in which they are here managed, certainly
gives them the best chance that now remains for them;
and, at all events, it cannot be denied that the effect
is striking and graceful.

* * * *
*

There is a fragment of a projected Epic, entitled
“Hyperion,” on the expulsion of Saturn
and the Titanian deities by Jupiter and his younger
adherents, of which we cannot advise the completion:
For, though there are passages of some force and grandeur,
it is sufficiently obvious, from the specimen before
us, that the subject is too far removed from all the
sources of human interest, to be successfully treated
by any modern author. Mr. Keats has unquestionably
a very beautiful imagination, and a great familiarity
with the finest diction of English poetry; but he
must learn not to misuse or misapply these advantages;
and neither to waste the good gifts of nature and study
on intractable themes, nor to luxuriate too recklessly
on such as are more suitable.

Page 46

LORD BROUGHAM ON BYRON

[From The Edinburgh Review, January, 1808]

Hours of Idleness: A series of Poems, Original
and Translated. By GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON,
a minor. Newark, 1807.

The poesy of this young lord belongs to the class
which neither gods nor men are said to permit.
Indeed, we do not recollect to have seen a quantity
of verse with so few deviations in either direction
from that exact standard. His effusions are spread
over a dead flat, and can no more get above or below
the level, than if they were so much stagnant water.
As an extenuation of this offence, the noble author
is peculiarly forward in pleading minority. We
have it in the title-page, and on the very back of
the volume; it follows his name like a favourite part
of his style. Much stress is laid upon
it in the preface, and the poems are connected with
this general statement of his case, by particular
dates, substantiating the age at which each was written.
Now, the law upon the point of morality, we hold to
be perfectly clear. It is a plea available only
to the defendant; no plaintiff can offer it as a supplementary
ground of action. Thus, if any suit could be brought
against Lord Byron, for the purpose of compelling him
to put into court a certain quantity of poetry; and
if judgment were given against him, it is highly probable
that an exception would be taken, were he to deliver
for poetry, the contents of this volume.
To this he might plead minority; but as he
now makes voluntary tender of the article, he hath
no right to sue, on that ground, for the price is in
good current praise, should the goods be unmarketable.
This is our view of the law on the point, and we dare
to say, so will it be ruled. Perhaps, however,
in reality, all that he tells us about his youth,
is rather with a view to increase our wonder, than
to soften our censures. He possibly means to
say, “See how a minor can write! This poem
was actually composed by a young man of eighteen,
and this by one of only sixteen!” But, alas,
we all remember the poetry of Cowley at ten, and Pope
at twelve; and so far from hearing, with any surprise,
that very poor verses were written by a youth from
his leaving school to his leaving college, inclusive,
we really believe this to be the most common of all
occurrences; that it happens in the life of nine men
in ten who are educated in England; and that the tenth
man writes better verse than Lord Byron.

His other plea of privilege, our author rather brings
forward to wave it. He certainly, however, does
allude frequently to his family and ancestors—­sometimes
in poetry, sometimes in notes; and while giving up
his claim on the score of rank, he takes care to remember
us of Dr. Johnson’s saying, that when a nobleman
appears as an author, his merit should be handsomely
acknowledged. In truth, it is this consideration
only, that induces us to give Lord Byron’s poems
a place in our review, besides our desire to counsel
him, that he do forthwith abandon poetry, and turn
his talents, which are considerable, and his opportunities,
which are great, to better account.

Page 47

With this view, we must beg leave seriously to assure
him, that the mere rhyming of the final syllable,
even when accompanied by a certain number of feet;
nay, although (which does not always happen) those
feet should scan regularly, and have been all counted
accurately upon the fingers—­ is not the
whole art of poetry. We would entreat him to believe,
that a certain portion of liveliness, somewhat of
fancy, is necessary to constitute a poem; and that
a poem in the present day, to be read, must contain
at least one thought, either in a little degree different
from the ideas of former writers, or differently expressed.
We put it to his candour, whether there is anything
so deserving the name of poetry in verses like the
following, written in 1806, and whether, if a youth
of eighteen could say anything so uninteresting to
his ancestors, a youth of nineteen should publish
it.

Lord Byron should also have a care of attempting what
the greatest poets have done before him, for comparisons
(as he must have had occasion to see at his writing-master’s)
are odious. Gray’s ode on Eton College,
should really have kept out the ten hobbling stanzas
“on a distant view of the village and school
of Harrow.” ...

However, be this as it may, we fear his translations
and imitations are great favourites with Lord Byron.
We have them of all kinds, from Anacreon to Ossian;
and, viewing them as school exercises, they may pass.
Only why print them after they have had their day and
served their turn?...

It is a sort of privilege of poets to be egotists;
but they should “use it as not abusing it”;
and particularly one who piques himself (though indeed
at the ripe age of nineteen) of being “an infant
bard”—­("The artless Helicon I boast
is youth";)—­should either not know, or not
seem to know, so much about his own ancestry.
Besides a poem on the family seat of the Byrons, we
have another on the self same subject, introduced
with an apology, “he certainly had no intention
of inserting it”; but really, “the particular
request of some friends,” etc., etc.
It concludes with five stanzas on himself, “the
last and youngest of a noble line.” There
is a good deal also about his maternal ancestors, in
a poem on Lachin-y-gair, a mountain where he spent
part of his youth, and might have learnt that a pibroch
is not a bagpipe, any more than a duet means a fiddle....

But whatever judgment may be passed on the poems of
this noble junior, it seems we must take them as we
find them, and be content; for they are the last we
shall ever have from him. He is at best, he says,
but an intruder into the groves of Parnassus; he never
lived in a garret, like thorough-bred poets; and “though
he once roved a careless mountaineer in the Highlands
of Scotland,” he has not of late enjoyed this

Page 48

advantage. Moreover, he expects no profit from
his publication; and whether it succeeds or not, “it
is highly improbable, from his situation and pursuits
hereafter,” that he should again condescend to
become an author. Therefore, let us take what
we can get and be thankful. What right have we
poor devils to be nice? We are well off to have
got so much from a man of this Lord’s station,
who does not live in a garret, but “has the
sway” of Newstead Abbey. Again we say, let
us be thankful; and, with honest Sancho, bid God bless
the giver, nor look the gift horse in the mouth.

SYDNEY SMITH ON HANNAH MOORE

[From The Edinburgh Review, April, 1809]

Caelebs in Search of a Wife; comprehending Observations
on Domestic Habits and Manners, Religion and Morals.
2 vols. London, 1809.

This book is written, or supposed to be written (for
we would speak timidly of the mysteries of superior
beings), by the celebrated Mrs. Hannah Moore!
We shall probably give great offence by such indiscretion;
but still we must be excused for treating it as a book
merely human,—­an uninspired production,—­the
result of mortality left to itself, and depending
on its own limited resources. In taking up the
subject in this point of view, we solemnly disclaim
the slightest intention of indulging in any indecorous
levity, or of wounding the religious feelings of a
large class of very respectable persons. It is
the only method in which we can possibly make this
work a proper object of criticism. We have the
strongest possible doubts of the attributes usually
ascribed to this authoress; and we think it more simple
and manly to say so at once, than to admit nominally
superlunary claims, which, in the progress of our
remarks, we should virtually deny.

Caelebs wants a wife; and, after the death of his
father, quits his estate in Northumberland to see
the world, and to seek for one of its best productions,
a woman, who may add materially to the happiness of
his future life. His first journey is to London,
where, in the midst of the gay society of the metropolis,
of course, he does not find a wife; and his next journey
is to the family of Mr. Stanley, the head of the Methodists,
a serious people, where, of course, he does find a
wife. The exaltation, therefore, of what the
authoress deems to be the religious, and the depretiation
of what she considers to be the worldly character,
and the influence of both upon matrimonial happiness,
form the subject of this novel—­rather of
this dramatic sermon.

Page 49

The machinery upon which the discourse is suspended,
is of the slightest and most inartificial texture,
bearing every mark of haste, and possessing not the
slightest claim to merit. Events there are none;
and scarcely a character of any interest. The
book is intended to convey religious advice; and no
more labour appears to have been bestowed upon the
story, than was merely sufficient to throw it out of
the dry, didactic form. Lucilla is totally uninteresting;
so is Mr. Stanley; Dr. Barlow still worse; and Caelebs
a mere clod or dolt. Sir John and Lady Belfield
are rather more interesting—­and for a very
obvious reason, they have some faults;—­they
put us in mind of men and women;—­they seem
to belong to one common nature with ourselves.
As we read, we seem to think we might act as such
people act, and therefore we attend; whereas imitation
is hopeless in the more perfect characters which Mrs.
Moore has set before us; and therefore, they inspire
us with very little interest.

There are books however of all kinds; and those may
not be unwisely planned which set before us very pure
models. They are less probable, and therefore
less amusing than ordinary stories; but they are more
amusing than plain, unfabled precept. Sir Charles
Grandison is less agreeable than Tom Jones; but it
is more agreeable than Sherlock and Tillotson; and
teaches religion and morality to many who would not
seek it in the productions of these professional writers.

But, making every allowance for the difficulty of
the task which Mrs. Moore has prescribed to herself,
the book abounds with marks of negligence and want
of skill; with representations of life and manners
which are either false or trite.

Temples to friendship and virtue must be totally laid
aside, for many years to come, in novels. Mr.
Lane, of the Minerva Press, has given them up long
since; and we were quite surprised to find such a writer
as Mrs. Moore busied in moral brick and mortar.
Such an idea, at first, was merely juvenile; the second
time a little nauseous; but the ten thousandth time,
it is quite intolerable. Caelebs, upon his first
arrival in London, dines out,—­meets with
a bad dinner,—­supposes the cause of that
bad dinner to be the erudition of the ladies of the
house,—­talks to them upon learned subjects,
and finds them as dull and ignorant as if they had
piqued themselves upon all the mysteries of housewifery.
We humbly submit to Mrs. Moore, that this is not humorous,
but strained and unnatural. Philippics against
frugivorous children after dinner, are too common.
Lady Melbury has been introduced into every novel
for these four years last past. Peace to her ashes!...

Page 50

The great object kept in view throughout the whole
of this introduction, is the enforcement of religious
principle, and the condemnation of a life lavished
in dissipation and fashionable amusement. In the
pursuit of this object, it appears to us, that Mrs.
Moore is much too severe upon the ordinary amusements
of mankind, many of which she does not object to in
this, or that degree; but altogether. Caelebs
and Lucilla, her optimus and optima,
never dance, and never go to the play. They not
only stay away from the comedies of Congreve and Farquhar,
for which they may easily enough be forgiven; but
they never go to see Mrs. Siddons in the Gamester,
or in Jane Shore. The finest exhibition of talent,
and the most beautiful moral lessons, are interdicted,
at the theatre. There is something in the word
Playhouse, which seems so closely connected,
in the minds of these people, with sin, and Satan,—­
that it stands in their vocabulary for every species
of abomination. And yet why? Where is every
feeling more roused in favour of virtue, than at a
good play? Where is goodness so feelingly, so
enthusiastically learnt? What so solemn as to
see the excellent passions of the human heart called
forth by a great actor, animated by a great poet?
To hear Siddons repeat what Shakespeare wrote!
To behold the child, and his mother—­the
noble, and the poor artisan,—­the monarch,
and his subjects—­all ages and all ranks
convulsed with one common passion—­wrung
with one common anguish, and, with loud sobs and cries,
doing involuntary homage to the God that made their
hearts! What wretched infatuation to interdict
such amusements as these! What a blessing that
mankind can be allured from sensual gratification,
and find relaxation and pleasure in such pursuits!
But the excellent Mr. Stanley is uniformly paltry and
narrow, —­always trembling at the idea of
being entertained, and thinking no Christian safe
who is not dull. As to the spectacles of impropriety
which are sometimes witnessed in parts of the theatre;
such reasons apply, in much stronger degree, to not
driving along the Strand, or any of the great public
streets of London, after dark; and if the virtue of
well educated young persons is made of such very frail
materials, their best resource is a nunnery at once.
It is a very bad rule, however, never to quit the
house for fear of catching cold.

Mrs. Moore practically extends the same doctrine to
cards and assemblies. No cards—­because
cards are employed in gaming; no assemblies—­because
many dissipated persons pass their lives in assemblies.
Carry this but a little further, and we must say,—­no
wine, because of drunkenness; no meat, because of
gluttony; no use, that there may be no abuse!
The fact is, that Mr. Stanley wants not only to be
religious, but to be at the head of the religious.
These little abstinences are the cockades by which
the party are known,—­the rallying points
for the evangelical faction. So natural is the
love of power, that it sometimes becomes the influencing
motive with the sincere advocates of that blessed
religion, whose very characteristic excellence is
the humility which it inculcates.

Page 51

We observe that Mrs. Moore, in one part of her work,
falls into the common error about dress. She
first blames ladies for exposing their persons in
the present style of dress; and then says, if they
knew their own interest,—­if they were aware
how much more alluring they were to men when their
charms are less displayed, they would make the desired
alteration from motives merely selfish.

“Oh! if women in general knew what
was their real interest! if they
could guess with what a charm even
the appearance of modesty
invests its possessor, they would dress
decorously from mere
self-love, if not from principle.
The designing would assume modesty
as an artifice; the coquet would adopt
it as an allurement; the pure
as her appropriate attraction; and the
voluptuous as the most
infallible art of seduction.”
I. 189.

If there is any truth in this passage, nudity becomes
a virtue; and no decent woman, for the future, can
be seen in garments.

We have a few more of Mrs. Moore’s opinions
to notice.—­It is not fair to attack the
religion of the times, because, in large and indiscriminate
parties, religion does not become the subject of conversation.
Conversation must and ought to grow out of materials
on which men can agree, not upon subjects which try
the passions. But this good lady wants to see
men chatting together upon the Pelagian heresy—­
to hear, in the afternoon, the theological rumours
of the day—­and to glean polemical tittle-tattle
at a tea-table rout. All the disciples of this
school uniformly fall into the same mistake. They
are perpetually calling upon their votaries for religious
thoughts and religious conversation in every thing;
inviting them to ride, walk, row, wrestle, and dine
out religiously;—­forgetting that the being
to whom this impossible purity is recommended, is
a being compelled to scramble for his existence and
support for ten hours out of the sixteen he is awake;
—­forgetting that he must dig, beg, read,
think, move, pay, receive, praise, scold, command
and obey;—­forgetting, also, that if men
conversed as often upon religious subjects as they
do upon the ordinary occurrences of the world, that
they would converse upon them with the same familiarity,
and want of respect,—­that religion would
then produce feelings not more solemn or exalted than
any other topics which constitute at present the common
furniture of human understandings.

We are glad to find in this work, some strong compliments
to the efficacy of works,—­some distinct
admissions that it is necessary to be honest and just,
before we can be considered as religious. Such
sort of concessions are very gratifying to us; but
how will they be received by the children of the Tabernacle?
It is quite clear, indeed, throughout the whole of
the work, that an apologetical explanation of certain
religious opinions is intended; and there is a considerable
abatement of that tone of insolence with which the
improved Christians are apt to treat the bungling
specimens of piety to be met with in the more antient
churches.

Page 52

So much for the extravagances of this lady.—­With
equal sincerity, and with greater pleasure, we bear
testimony to her talents, her good sense, and her
real piety. There occurs every now and then in
her productions, very original, and very profound
observations. Her advice is very often characterised
by the most amiable good sense, and conveyed in the
most brilliant and inviting style. If, instead
of belonging to a trumpery gospel faction, she had
only watched over those great points of religion in
which the hearts of every sect of Christians are interested,
she would have been one of the most useful and valuable
writers of her day. As it is, every man would
wish his wife and his children to read Caelebs;—­watching
himself its effects;—­separating the piety
from the puerility;—­and showing that it
is very possible to be a good Christian, without degrading
the human understanding to the trash and folly of
Methodism.

It would be scarcely possible for a man of Mr. Southey’s
talents and acquirements to write two volumes so large
as those before us, which should be wholly destitute
of information and amusement. Yet we do not remember
to have read with so little satisfaction any equal
quantity of matter, written by any man of real abilities.
We have, for some time past, observed with great regret
the strange infatuation which leads the Poet Laureate
to abandon those departments of literature in which
he might excel, and to lecture the public on sciences
of which he has still the very alphabet to learn.
He has now, we think, done his worst. The subject
which he has at last undertaken to treat is one which
demands all the highest intellectual and moral qualities
of a philosophical statesman, an understanding at
once comprehensive and acute, a heart at once upright
and charitable. Mr. Southey brings to the task
two faculties which were never, we believe, vouchsafed
in measure so copious to any human being, the faculty
of believing without a reason, and the faculty of
hating without a provocation.

It is, indeed, most extraordinary, that a mind like
Mr. Southey’s, a mind richly endowed in many
respects by nature, and highly cultivated by study,
a mind which has exercised considerable influence on
the most enlightened generation of the most enlightened
people that ever existed, should be utterly destitute
of the power of discerning truth from falsehood.
Yet such is the fact. Government is to Mr. Southey
one of the fine arts. He judges of a theory,
of a public measure, of a religion or a political
party, of a peace or a war, as men judge of a picture
or a statue, by the effect produced on his imagination.
A chain of associations is to him what a chain of
reasoning is to other men; and what he calls his opinions
are in fact merely his tastes....

Page 53

Now in the mind of Mr. Southey reason has no place
at all, as either leader or follower, as either sovereign
or slave. He does not seem to know what an argument
is. He never uses arguments himself. He never
troubles himself to answer the arguments of his opponents.
It has never occurred to him, that a man ought to
be able to give some better account of the way in
which he has arrived at his opinions than merely that
it is his will and pleasure to hold them. It
has never occurred to him that there is a difference
between assertion and demonstration, that a rumour
does not always prove a fact, that a single fact, when
proved, is hardly foundation enough for a theory,
that two contradictory propositions cannot be undeniable
truths, that to beg the question is not the way to
settle it, or that when an objection is raised, it
ought to be met with something more convincing than
“scoundrel” and “blockhead.”

It would be absurd to read the works of such a writer
for political instruction. The utmost that can
be expected from any system promulgated by him is
that it may be splendid and affecting, that it may
suggest sublime and pleasing images. His scheme
of philosophy is a mere day-dream, a poetical creation,
like the Domdaniel cavern, the Swerga, or Padalon;
and indeed it bears no inconsiderable resemblance to
those gorgeous visions. Like them, it has something
of invention, grandeur, and brilliancy. But,
like them, it is grotesque and extravagant, and perpetually
violates even that conventional probability which is
essential to the effect of works of art.

The warmest admirers of Mr. Southey will scarcely,
we think, deny that his success has almost always
borne an inverse proportion to the degree in which
his undertakings have required a logical head.
His poems, taken in the mass, stand far higher than
his prose works. His official Odes, indeed, among
which the Vision of Judgement must be classed, are,
for the most part, worse than Pye’s and as bad
as Cibber’s; nor do we think him generally happy
in short pieces. But his longer poems, though
full of faults, are nevertheless very extraordinary
productions. We doubt greatly whether they will
be read fifty years hence; but that, if they are read,
they will be admired, we have no doubt whatever....

The extraordinary bitterness of spirit which Mr. Southey
manifests towards his opponents is, no doubt, in a
great measure to be attributed to the manner in which
he forms his opinions. Differences of taste, it
has often been remarked, produce greater exasperation
than differences on points of science. But this
is not all. A peculiar austerity marks almost
all Mr. Southey’s judgments of men and actions.
We are far from blaming him for fixing on a high standard
of morals and for applying that standard to every
case. But rigour ought to be accompanied by discernment;
and of discernment Mr. Southey seems to be utterly
destitute. His mode of judging is monkish.

Page 54

It is exactly what we should expect from a stern old
Benedictine, who had been preserved from many ordinary
frailties by the restraints of his situation.
No man out of a cloister ever wrote about love, for
example, so coldly and at the same time so grossly.
His descriptions of it are just what we should hear
from a recluse who knew the passion only from the details
of the confessional. Almost all his heroes make
love either like Seraphim or like cattle. He
seems to have no notion of any thing between the Platonic
passion of the Glendoveer who gazes with rapture on
his mistress’s leprosy, and the brutal appetite
of Arvalan and Roderick. In Roderick, indeed,
the two characters are united. He is first all
clay, and then all spirit. He goes forth a Tarquin,
and comes back too ethereal to be married. The
only love scene, as far as we can recollect, in Madoc,
consists of the delicate attentions which a savage,
who has drunk too much of the Prince’s excellent
metheglin, offers to Goervyl. It would be the
labour of a week to find, in all the vast mass of Mr.
Southey’s poetry, a single passage indicating
any sympathy with those feelings which have consecrated
the shades of Vaucluse and the rocks of Meillerie.

Indeed, if we except some very pleasing images of
paternal tenderness and filial duty, there is scarcely
any thing soft or humane in Mr. Southey’s poetry.
What theologians call the spiritual sins are his cardinal
virtues, hatred, pride, and the insatiable thirst of
vengeance. These passions he disguises under
the name of duties; he purifies them from the alloy
of vulgar interests; he ennobles them by uniting them
with energy, fortitude, and a severe sanctity of manners;
and he then holds them up to the admiration of mankind.
This is the spirit of Thalaba, of Ladurlad, of Adosinda,
of Roderick after his conversion. It is the spirit
which, in all his writings, Mr. Southey appears to
affect. “I do well to be angry,”
seems to be the predominant feeling of his mind.
Almost the only mark of charity which he vouchsafes
to his opponents is to pray for their reformation;
and this he does in terms not unlike those in which
we can imagine a Portuguese priest interceding with
Heaven for a Jew, delivered over to the secular arm
after a relapse.

We have always heard, and fully believe, that Mr.
Southey is a very amiable and humane man; nor do we
intend to apply to him personally any of the remarks
which we have made on the spirit of his writings.
Such are the caprices of human nature. Even Uncle
Toby troubled himself very little about the French
grenadiers who fell on the glacis of Namur. And
Mr. Southey, when he takes up his pen, changes his
nature as much as Captain Shandy, when he girt on
his sword. The only opponents to whom the Laureate
gives quarter are those in whom he finds something
of his own character reflected. He seems to have
an instinctive antipathy for calm, moderate men, for
men who shun extremes, and who render reasons.
He treated Mr. Owen of Lanark, for example, with infinitely
more respect than he has shown to Mr. Hallam or to
Dr. Lingard; and this for no reason that we can discover,
except that Mr. Owen is more unreasonably and hopelessly
in the wrong than any speculator of our time.

Page 55

Mr. Southey’s political system is just what
we might expect from a man who regards politics, not
as matter of science, but as matter of taste and feeling.
All his schemes of government have been inconsistent
with themselves. In his youth he was a republican;
yet, as he tells us in his preface to these Colloquies,
he was even then opposed to the Catholic Claims.
He is now a violent Ultra-Tory. Yet, while he
maintains, with vehemence approaching to ferocity,
all the sterner and harsher parts of the Ultra-Tory
theory of government, the baser and dirtier part of
that theory disgusts him. Exclusion, persecution,
severe punishments for libellers and demagogues, proscriptions,
massacres, civil war, if necessary, rather than any
concession to a discontented people; these are the
measures which he seems inclined to recommend.
A severe and gloomy tyranny, crushing opposition,
silencing remonstrance, drilling the minds of the
people into unreasoning obedience, has in it something
of grandeur which delights his imagination. But
there is nothing fine in the shabby tricks and jobs
of office; and Mr. Southey, accordingly, has no toleration
for them. When a Jacobin, he did not perceive
that his system led logically, and would have led
practically, to the removal of religious distinctions.
He now commits a similar error. He renounces the
abject and paltry part of the creed of his party, without
perceiving that it is also an essential part of that
creed. He would have tyranny and purity together;
though the most superficial observation might have
shown him that there can be no tyranny without corruption.

It is high time, however, that we should proceed to
the consideration of the work which is our more immediate
subject, and which, indeed, illustrates in almost
every page our general remarks on Mr. Southey’s
writings. In the preface, we are informed that
the author, notwithstanding some statements to the
contrary, was always opposed to the Catholic Claims.
We fully believe this; both because we are sure that
Mr. Southey is incapable of publishing a deliberate
falsehood, and because his assertion is in itself
probable. We should have expected that, even
in his wildest paroxysms of democratic enthusiasm,
Mr. Southey would have felt no wish to see a simple
remedy applied to a great practical evil. We
should have expected that the only measure which all
the great statesmen of two generations have agreed
with each other in supporting would be the only measure
which Mr. Southey would have agreed with himself in
opposing. He has passed from one extreme of political
opinion to another, as Satan in Milton went round the
globe, contriving constantly to “ride with darkness.”
Wherever the thickest shadow of the night may at any
moment chance to fall, there is Mr. Southey.
It is not every body who could have so dexterously
avoided blundering on the daylight in the course of
a journey to the antipodes.

* * * *
*

Page 56

It is not by the intermeddling of Mr. Southey’s
idol, the omniscient and omnipotent State, but by
the prudence and energy of the people, that England
has hitherto been carried forward in civilisation;
and it is to the same prudence and the same energy
that we now look with comfort and good hope.
Our rulers will best promote the improvement of the
nation by strictly confining themselves to their own
legitimate duties, by leaving capital to find its
most lucrative course, commodities their fair price,
industry and intelligence their natural reward, idleness
and folly their natural punishment, by maintaining
peace, by defending property, by diminishing the price
of law, and by observing strict economy in every department
of the state. Let the Government do this:
the People will assuredly do the rest.

ON CROKER’S “BOSWELL”

[From The Edinburgh Review, September, 1831]

The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Including
a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, by James Boswell,
Esq. A new Edition, with numerous Additions and
Notes. By JOHN WILSON CROKER, LL.D., F.R.S. 5 vols.,
8vo. London, 1831.

This work has greatly disappointed us. Whatever
faults we may have been prepared to find in it, we
fully expected that it would be a valuable addition
to English literature; that it would contain many curious
facts, and many judicious remarks; that the style of
the notes would be neat, clear, and precise; and that
the typographical execution would be, as in new editions
of classical works it ought to be, almost faultless.
We are sorry to be obliged to say that the merits of
Mr. Croker’s performance are on a par with those
of a certain leg of mutton on which Dr. Johnson dined,
while travelling from London to Oxford, and which he,
with characteristic energy, pronounced to be “as
bad as bad could be, ill fed, ill killed, ill kept,
and ill dressed.” This edition is ill compiled,
ill arranged, ill written, and ill printed.

Nothing in the work has astonished us so much as the
ignorance or carelessness of Mr. Croker with respect
to facts and dates. Many of his blunders are
such as we should be surprised to hear any well educated
gentleman commit, even in conversation. The notes
absolutely swarm with misstatements, into which the
editor never would have fallen, if he had taken the
slightest pains to investigate the truth of his assertions,
or if he had even been well acquainted with the book
on which he undertook to comment.

We will give a few instances—­

* * * *
*

Page 57

We will not multiply instances of this scandalous
inaccuracy. It is clear that a writer who, even
when warned by the text on which he is commenting,
falls into such mistakes as these, is entitled to no
confidence whatever. Mr. Croker has committed
an error of five years with respect to the publication
of Goldsmith’s novel, an error of twelve years
with respect to the publication of part of Gibbon’s
History, an error of twenty-one years with respect
to an event in Johnson’s life so important as
the taking of the doctoral degree. Two of these
three errors he has committed, while ostentatiously
displaying his own accuracy, and correcting what he
represents as the loose assertions of others.
How can his readers take on trust his statements concerning
the births, marriages, divorces, and deaths of a crowd
of people, whose names are scarcely known to this
generation? It is not likely that a person who
is ignorant of what almost everybody knows can know
that of which almost everybody is ignorant. We
did not open this book with any wish to find blemishes
in it. We have made no curious researches.
The work itself, and a very common knowledge of literary
and political history, have enabled us to detect the
mistakes which we have pointed out, and many other
mistakes of the same kind. We must say, and we
say it with regret, that we do not consider the authority
of Mr. Croker, unsupported by other evidence, as sufficient
to justify any writer who may follow him in relating
a single anecdote or in assigning a date to a single
event.

Mr. Croker shows almost as much ignorance and heedlessness
in his criticisms as in his statements concerning
facts. Dr. Johnson said, very reasonably as it
appears to us, that some of the satires of Juvenal
are too gross for imitation. Mr. Croker, who,
by the way, is angry with Johnson for defending Prior’s
tales against the charge of indecency, resents this
aspersion on Juvenal, and indeed refuses to believe
that the doctor can have said anything so absurd.
“He probably said—­some passages
of them—­for there are none of Juvenal’s
satires to which the same objection may be made as
to one of Horace’s, that it is altogether
gross and licentious."[1] Surely Mr. Croker can never
have read the second and ninth satires of Juvenal.

[1] I. 167.

Indeed the decisions of this editor on points of classical
learning, though pronounced in a very authoritative
tone, are generally such that, if a schoolboy under
our care were to utter them, our soul assuredly should
not spare for his crying. It is no disgrace to
a gentleman who has been engaged during near thirty
years in political life that he has forgotten his
Greek and Latin. But he becomes justly ridiculous
if, when no longer able to construe a plain sentence,
he affects to sit in judgment on the most delicate
questions of style and metre. From one blunder,
a blunder which no good scholar would have made, Mr.
Croker was saved, as he informs us, by Sir Robert

Page 58

Peel, who quoted a passage exactly in point from Horace.
We heartily wish that Sir Robert, whose classical
attainments are well known, had been more frequently
consulted. Unhappily he was not always at his
friend’s elbow; and we have therefore a rich
abundance of the strangest errors. Boswell has
preserved a poor epigram by Johnson, inscribed “Ad
Lauram parituram.” Mr. Croker censures
the poet for applying the word puella to a lady in
Laura’s situation, and for talking of the beauty
of Lucina. “Lucina,” he says, “was
never famed for her beauty."[1] If Sir Robert Peel
had seen this note, he probably would have again refuted
Mr. Croker’s criticisms by an Appeal to Horace.
In the secular ode, Lucina is used as one of the names
of Diana, and the beauty of Diana is extolled by all
the most orthodox doctors of the ancient mythology,
from Homer in his Odyssey, to Claudian in his Rape
of Proserpine. In another ode, Horace describes
Diana as the goddess who assists the “laborantes
utero puellas.” But we are ashamed to detain
our readers with this fourth-form learning.

* * * *
*

A very large proportion of the two thousand five hundred
notes which the editor boasts of having added to those
of Boswell and Malone consists of the flattest and
poorest reflections, reflections such as the least
intelligent reader is quite competent to make for himself,
and such as no intelligent reader would think it worth
while to utter aloud. They remind us of nothing
so much as of those profound and interesting annotations
which are penciled by sempstresses and apothecaries’
boys on the dog-eared margins of novels borrowed from
circulating libraries; “How beautiful!”
“Cursed Prosy!” “I don’t like
Sir Reginald Malcolm at all.” “I
think Pelham is a sad dandy.” Mr. Croker
is perpetually stopping us in our progress through
the most delightful narrative in the language, to
observe that really Dr. Johnson was very rude, that
he talked more for victory than for truth, that his
taste for port wine with capillaire in it was very
odd, that Boswell was impertinent, that it was foolish
in Mrs. Thrale to marry the music-master; and so forth.

We cannot speak more favourably of the manner in which
the notes are written than of the matter of which
they consist. We find in every page words used
in wrong senses, and constructions which violate the
plainest rules of grammar. We have the vulgarism
of “mutual friend,” for “common
friend.” We have “fallacy” used
as synonymous with “falsehood.” We
have many such inextricable labyrinths of pronouns
as that which follows: “Lord Erskine was
fond of this anecdote; he told it to the editor the
first time that he had the honour of being in his company.”
Lastly, we have a plentiful supply of sentences resembling
those which we subjoin. “Markland, who,
with Jortin and Thirlby, Johnson calls three contemporaries
of great eminence."[2] “Warburton himself did
not feel, as Mr. Boswell was disposed to think he

Page 59

did, kindly or gratefully of Johnson."[3] “It
was him that Horace Walpole called a man who
never made a bad figure but as an author."[4] One
or two of these solecisms should perhaps be attributed
to the printer, who has certainly done his best to
fill both the text and the notes with all sorts of
blunders. In truth, he and the editor have between
them made the book so bad, that we do not well see
how it could have been worse.

[2] IV. 377. [3] IV. 415. [4] II. 461.

When we turn from the commentary of Mr. Croker to
the work of our old friend Boswell, we find it not
only worse printed than in any other edition with
which we are acquainted, but mangled in the most wanton
manner. Much that Boswell inserted in his narrative
is, without the shadow of a reason, degraded to the
appendix. The editor has also taken upon himself
to alter or omit passages which he considers as indecorous.
This prudery is quite unintelligible to us. There
is nothing immoral in Boswell’s book, nothing
which tends to inflame the passions. He sometimes
uses plain words. But if this be a taint which
requires expurgation, it would be desirable to begin
by expurgating the morning and evening lessons.
The delicate office which Mr. Croker has undertaken
he has performed in the most capricious manner.
One strong, old-fashioned, English word, familiar
to all who read their Bibles, is changed for a softer
synonyme in some passages, and suffered to stand unaltered
in others. In one place a faint allusion made
by Johnson to an indelicate subject, an allusion so
faint that, till Mr. Croker’s note pointed it
out to us, we had never noticed it, and of which we
are quite sure that the meaning would never be discovered
by any of those for whose sake books are expurgated,
is altogether omitted. In another place, a coarse
and stupid jest of Dr. Taylor on the subject, expressed
in the broadest language, almost the only passage,
as far as we remember, in all Boswell’s book,
which we should have been inclined to leave out, is
suffered to remain.

We complain, however, much more of the additions than
of the omissions. We have half of Mrs. Thrale’s
book, scraps of Mr. Tyers, scraps of Mr. Murphy, scraps
of Mr. Cradock, long prosings of Sir John Hawkins,
and connecting observations by Mr. Croker himself,
inserted into the midst of Boswell’s text.

* * * *
*

The Life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a
very great work. Homer is not more decidedly
the first of heroic poets, Shakspeare is not more
decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not
more decidedly the first of orators than Boswell is
the first of biographers. He has no second.
He has distanced all his competitors so decidedly that
it is not worth while to place them. Eclipse
is first, and the rest nowhere.

Page 60

We are not sure that there is in the whole history
of the human intellect so strange a phenomenon as
this book. Many of the greatest men that ever
lived have written biography. Boswell was one
of the smallest men that ever lived, and he has beaten
them all. He was, if we are to give any credit
to his own account or to the united testimony of all
who knew him, a man of the meanest and feeblest intellect.
Johnson described him as a fellow who had missed his
only chance of immortality by not having been alive
when the Dunciad was written. Beauclerk
used his name as a proverbial expression for a bore.
He was the laughing-stock of the whole of that brilliant
society which has owed to him the greater part of
its fame. He was always laying himself at the
feet of some eminent man, and begging to be spit upon
and trampled upon. He was always earning some
ridiculous nickname, and then “binding it as
a crown unto him,” not merely in metaphor, but
literally. He exhibited himself, at the Shakespeare
Jubilee, to all the crowd which filled Stratford-on-Avon,
with a placard round his hat bearing the inscription
of Corsica Boswell. In his Tour, he proclaimed
to all the world that at Edinburgh he was known by
the appellation of Paoli Boswell. Servile and
impertinent, shallow and pedantic, a bigot and a sot,
bloated with family pride, and eternally blustering
about the dignity of a born gentleman, yet stooping
to be a talebearer, an eavesdropper, a common butt
in the taverns of London, so curious to know everybody
who was talked about, that, Tory and High Churchman
as he was, he manoeuvred, we have been told, for an
introduction to Tom Paine, so vain of the most
childish distinctions, that when he had been to court
he drove to the office where his book was printing
without changing his clothes, and summoned all the
printer’s devils to admire his new ruffles and
sword; such was this man, and such he was content
and proud to be. Everything which another man
would have hidden, everything the publication of which
would have made another man hang himself, was matter
of gay and clamorous exultation to his weak and diseased
mind. What silly things he said, what bitter
retorts he provoked, how at one place he was troubled
with evil presentiments which came to nothing, how
at another place, on waking from a drunken doze, he
read the prayerbook and took a hair of the dog that
had bitten him, how he went to see men hanged and came
away maudlin, how he added five hundred pounds to
the fortune of one of his babies because she was not
scared at Johnson’s ugly face, how he was frightened
out of his wits at sea, and how the sailors quieted
him as they would have quieted a child, how tipsy
he was at Lady Cork’s one evening and how much
his merriment annoyed the ladies, how impertinent
he was to the Duchess of Argyle and with what stately
contempt she put down his impertinence, how Colonel
Macleod sneered to his face at his impudent obtrusiveness,
how his father and the very wife of his bosom laughed

Page 61

and fretted at his fooleries; all these things he proclaimed
to all the world, as if they had been subjects for
pride and ostentatious rejoicing. All the caprices
of his temper, all the illusions of his vanity, all
his hypochondriac whimsies, all his castles in the
air, he displayed with a cool self-complacency, a
perfect unconsciousness that he was making a fool
of himself, to which it is impossible to find a parallel
in the whole history of mankind. He has used many
people ill; but assuredly he has used nobody so ill
as himself.

That such a man should have written one of the best
books in the world is strange enough. But this
is not all. Many persons who have conducted themselves
foolishly in active life, and whose conversation has
indicated no superior powers of mind, have left us
valuable works. Goldsmith was very justly described
by one of his contemporaries as an inspired idiot,
and by another as a being

Who wrote like an angel, and talked like
poor Poll.

La Fontaine was in society a mere simpleton.
His blunders would not come in amiss among the stories
of Hierocles. But these men attained literary
eminence in spite of their weaknesses. Boswell
attained it by reason of his weaknesses. If he
had not been a great fool, he would never have been
a great writer. Without all the qualities which
made him the jest and the torment of those among whom
he lived, without the officiousness, the inquisitiveness,
the effrontery, the toad-eating, the insensibility
to all reproof, he never could have produced so excellent
a book. He was a slave, proud of his servitude,
a Paul Pry, convinced that his own curiosity and garrulity
were virtues, an unsafe companion who never scrupled
to repay the most liberal hospitality by the basest
violation of confidence, a man without delicacy, without
shame, without sense enough to know when he was hurting
the feelings of others or when he was exposing himself
to derision; and because he was all this, he has,
in an important department of literature, immeasurably
surpassed such writers as Tacitus, Clarendon, Alfieri,
and his own idol Johnson.

Of the talents which ordinarily raise men to eminence
as writers, Boswell had absolutely none. There
is not in all his books a single remark of his own
on literature, politics, religion, or society, which
is not either common-place or absurd. His dissertations
on hereditary gentility, on the slave-trade, and on
the entailing of landed estates, may serve as examples.
To say that these passages are sophistical would be
to pay them an extravagant compliment. They have
no pretence to argument, or even to meaning.
He has reported innumerable observations made by himself
in the course of conversation.

Of those observations we do not remember one which
is above the intellectual capacity of a boy of fifteen.
He has printed many of his own letters, and in these
letters he is always ranting or twaddling. Logic,
eloquence, wit, taste, all those things which are generally
considered as making a book valuable, were utterly
wanting to him. He had, indeed, a quick observation
and a retentive memory. These qualities, if he
had been a man of sense and virtue, would scarcely
of themselves have sufficed to make him conspicuous;
but because he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb,
they have made him immortal.

Page 62

Those parts of his book which, considered abstractedly,
are most utterly worthless, are delightful when we
read them as illustrations of the character of the
writer. Bad in themselves, they are good dramatically,
like the nonsense of Justice Shallow, the clipped English
of Dr. Caius, or the misplaced consonants of Fluellen.
Of all confessors, Boswell is the most candid.

* * * *
*

Johnson came among [the distinguished writers of his
age] the solitary specimen of a past age, the last
survivor of the genuine race of Grub Street hacks;
the last of that generation of authors whose abject
misery and whose dissolute manners had furnished inexhaustible
matter to the satirical genius of Pope. From
nature he had received an uncouth figure, a diseased
constitution, and an irritable temper. The manner
in which the earlier years of his manhood had been
passed had given to his demeanour, and even to his
moral character, some peculiarities appalling to the
civilised beings who were the companions of his old
age. The perverse irregularity of his hours,
the slovenliness of his person, his fits of strenuous
exertion, interrupted by long intervals of sluggishness,
his strange abstinence, and his equally strange voracity,
his active benevolence, contrasted with the constant
rudeness and the occasional ferocity of his manners
in society, made him, in the opinion of those with
whom he lived during the last twenty years of his life,
a complete original. An original he was, undoubtedly,
in some respects. But if we possessed full information
concerning those who shared his early hardships, we
should probably find that what we call his singularities
of manner were, for the most part, failings which he
had in common with the class to which he belonged.
He ate at Streatham Park as he had been used to eat
behind the screen at St. John’s Gate, when he
was ashamed to show his ragged clothes. He ate
as it was natural that a man should eat, who, during
a great part of his life, had passed the morning in
doubt whether he should have food for the afternoon.
The habits of his early life had accustomed him to
bear privation with fortitude, but not to taste pleasure
with moderation. He could fast; but, when he
did not fast, he tore his dinner like a famished wolf,
with the veins swelling on his forehead, and the perspiration
running down his cheeks. He scarcely ever took
wine. But when he drank it, he drank it greedily
and in large tumblers. These were, in fact, mitigated
symptoms of that same moral disease which raged with
such deadly malignity in his friends Savage and Boyse.
The roughness and violence which he showed in society
were to be expected from a man whose temper, not naturally
gentle, had been long tried by the bitterest calamities,
by the want of meat, of fire, and of clothes, by the
importunity of creditors, by the insolence of booksellers,
by the derision of fools, by the insincerity of patrons,
by that bread which is the bitterest of all food,

Page 63

by those stairs which are the most toilsome of all
paths, by that deferred hope which makes the heart
sick. Through all these things the ill-dressed,
coarse, ungainly pedant had struggled manfully up to
eminence and command. It was natural that, in
the exercise of his power, he should be “eo
immitior, quia toleraverat,” that, though his
heart was undoubtedly generous and humane, his demeanour
in society should be harsh and despotic. For
severe distress he had sympathy, and not only sympathy,
but munificent relief. But for the suffering which
a harsh word inflicts upon a delicate mind he had
no pity; for it was a kind of suffering which he could
scarcely conceive. He would carry home on his
shoulders a sick and starving girl from the streets.
He turned his house into a place of refuge for a crowd
of wretched old creatures who could find no other
asylum; nor could all their peevishness and ingratitude
weary out his benevolence. But the pangs of wounded
vanity seemed to him ridiculous; and he scarcely felt
sufficient compassion even for the pangs of wounded
affection. He had seen and felt so much of sharp
misery, that he was not affected by paltry vexations;
and he seemed to think that everybody ought to be
as much hardened to those vexations as himself.
He was angry with Boswell for complaining of a head-ache,
with Mrs. Thrale for grumbling about the dust on the
road, or the smell of the kitchen. These were,
in his phrase, “foppish lamentations,”
which people ought to be ashamed to utter in a world
so full of sin and sorrow. Goldsmith crying because
the Good-natured Man had failed, inspired him with
no pity. Though his own health was not good,
he detested and despised valetudinarians. Pecuniary
losses, unless they reduced the loser absolutely to
beggary, moved him very little. People whose
hearts had been softened by prosperity might weep,
he said, for such events; but all that could be expected
of a plain man was not to laugh. He was not much
moved even by the spectacle of Lady Tavistock dying
of a broken heart for the loss of her lord. Such
grief he considered as a luxury reserved for the idle
and the wealthy. A washer-woman, left a widow
with nine small children, would not have sobbed herself
to death.

A person who troubled himself so little about small
or sentimental grievances was not likely to be very
attentive to the feelings of others in the ordinary
intercourse of society. He could not understand
how a sarcasm or a reprimand could make any man really
unhappy. “My dear doctor,” said he
to Goldsmith, “what harm does it do to a man
to call him Holofernes?” “Pooh, ma’am,”
he exclaimed to Mrs. Carter, “who is the worse
for being talked of uncharitably?” Politeness
has been well defined as benevolence in small things.
Johnson was impolite, not because he wanted benevolence,
but because small things appeared smaller to him than
to people who had never known what it was to live for
fourpence halfpenny a day.

Page 64

The characteristic peculiarity of his intellect was
the union of great powers with low prejudices.
If we judged of him by the best parts of his mind,
we should place him almost as high as he was placed
by the idolatry of Boswell; if by the worst parts
of his mind, we should place him even below Boswell
himself. Where he was not under the influence
of some strange scruple, or some domineering passion,
which prevented him from boldly and fairly investigating
a subject, he was a wary and acute reasoner, a little
too much inclined to scepticism, and a little too
fond of paradox. No man was less likely to be
imposed upon by fallacies in argument, or by exaggerated
statements of facts. But, if while he was beating
down sophisms and exposing false testimony, some childish
prejudices, such as would excite laughter in a well
managed nursery, came across him, he was smitten as
if by enchantment. His mind dwindled away under
the spell from gigantic elevation to dwarfish littleness.
Those who had lately been admiring its amplitude and
its force were now as much astonished at its strange
narrowness and feebleness as the fisherman in the
Arabian tale, when he saw the Genie, whose stature
had overshadowed the whole sea-coast, and whose might
seemed equal to a contest with armies, contract himself
to the dimensions of his small prison, and lie there
the helpless slave of the charm of Solomon.

* * * *
*

The characteristic faults of his style are so familiar
to all our readers, and have been so often burlesqued,
that it is almost superfluous to point them out.
It is well-known that he made less use than any other
eminent writer of those strong plain words, Anglo-Saxon
or Norman-French, of which the roots lie in the inmost
depths of our language; and that he felt a vicious
partiality for terms which, long after our own speech
had been fixed, were borrowed from the Greek and Latin,
and which, therefore, even when lawfully naturalised
must be considered as born aliens, not entitled to
rank with the king’s English. His constant
practice of padding out a sentence with useless epithets,
till it became as stiff as the best of an exquisite,
his antithetical forms of expression, constantly employed
even where there is no opposition in the ideas expressed,
his big words wasted on little things, his harsh inversions,
so widely different from those graceful and easy inversions
which give variety, spirit, and sweetness to the expression
of our great old writers, all these peculiarities have
been imitated by his admirers and parodied by his
assailants, till the public has become sick of the
subject.

Page 65

Goldsmith said to him, very wittily, and very justly,
“If you were to write a fable about little fishes,
doctor, you would make the little fishes talk like
whales.” No man surely ever had so little
talent for personation as Johnson. Whether he
wrote in the character of a disappointed legacy-hunter
or an empty town fop, of a crazy virtuoso or a flippant
coquette, he wrote in the same pompous and unbending
style. His speech, like Sir Piercy Shafton’s
Euphuistic eloquence, bewrayed him under every disguise.
Euphelia and Rhodoclea talk as finely as Imlac the
poet, or Seged, Emperor of Ethiopia. The gay Cornelia
describes her reception at the country-house of her
relations, in such terms as these: “I was
surprised, after the civilities of my first reception,
to find, instead of the leisure and tranquillity which
a rural life always promises, and, if well conducted,
might always afford, a confused wildness of care,
and a tumultuous hurry of diligence, by which every
face was clouded, and every motion agitated.”
The gentle Tranquilla informs us, that she “had
not passed the earlier part of life without the flattery
of courtship, and the joys of triumph; but had danced
the round of gaiety amidst the murmurs of envy and
the gratulations of applause, had been attended from
pleasure to pleasure by the great, the sprightly,
and the vain, and had seen her regard solicited by
the obsequiousness of gallantry, the gaiety of wit,
and the timidity of love.” Surely Sir John
Falstaff himself did not wear his petticoats with
a worse grace. The reader may well cry out, with
honest Sir Hugh Evans, “I like not when a ’oman
has a great peard: I spy a great peard under
her muffler."[5]

[5] It is proper to observe that this passage bears
a very close
resemblance to a passage in
the Rambler (No. 20). The resemblance
may possibly be the effect
of unconscious plagiarism.

We had something more to say. But our article
is already too long; and we must close it. We
would fain part in good humour from the hero, from
the biographer, and even from the editor, who, ill
as he has performed his task, has at least this claim
to our gratitude, that he has induced us to read Boswell’s
book again. As we close it, the club-room is before
us, and the table on which stands the omelet for Nugent,
and the lemons for Johnson. There are assembled
those heads which live for ever on the canvas of Reynolds.
There are the spectacles of Burke and the tall thin
form of Langton, the courtly sneer of Beauclerk and
the beaming smile of Garrick, Gibbon tapping his snuff-box
and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In
the foreground is that strange figure which is as familiar
to us as the figures of those among whom we have been
brought up, the gigantic body, the huge massy face,
seamed with the scars of disease, the brown coat,
the black worsted stockings, the grey wig with the
scorched foretop, the dirty hands, the nails bitten
and paired to the quick. We see the eyes and
mouth moving with convulsive twitches; we see the
heavy form rolling; we hear it puffing; and then comes
the “Why, sir!” and the “What then,
sir?” and the “No, Sir!” and the
“You don’t see your way through the question,
sir!”

Page 66

What a singular destiny has been that of this remarkable
man! To be regarded in his own age as a classic,
and in ours as a companion. To receive from his
contemporaries that full homage which men of genius
have in general received from posterity! To be
more intimately known to posterity than other men
are known to their contemporaries! That kind of
fame which is commonly the most transient is, in his
case, the most durable. The reputation of those
writings, which he probably expected to be immortal,
is every day fading; while those peculiarities of manner
and that careless table-talk the memory of which, he
probably thought, would die with him, are likely to
be remembered as long as the English language is spoken
in any quarter of the globe.

ON W. E. GLADSTONE

[From The Edinburgh Review, April, 1839]

The State in its Relations with the Church.
By W. E. GLADSTONE, Esq., Student of Christ Church,
and M.P. for Newark. 8vo. Second Edition.
London, 1839.

The author of this volume is a young man of unblemished
character, and of distinguished parliamentary talents,
the rising hope of those stern and unbending Tories
who follow, reluctantly and mutinously, a leader whose
experience and eloquence are indispensable to them,
but whose cautious temper and moderate opinions they
abhor. It would not be at all strange if Mr.
Gladstone were one of the most unpopular men in England.
But we believe that we do him no more than justice
when we say that his abilities and his demeanour have
obtained for him the respect and good will of all
parties. His first appearance in the character
of an author is therefore an interesting event; and
it is natural that the gentle wishes of the public
should go with him to his trial.

We are much pleased, without any reference to the
soundness or unsoundness of Mr. Gladstone’s
theories, to see a grave and elaborate treatise on
an important part of the Philosophy of Government proceed
from the pen of a young man who is rising to eminence
in the House of Commons. There is little danger
that people engaged in the conflicts of active life
will be too much addicted to general speculation.
The opposite vice is that which most easily besets
them. The times and tides of business and debate
tarry for no man. A politician must often talk
and act before he has thought and read. He may
be very ill informed respecting a question; all his
notions about it may be vague and inaccurate; but
speak he must; and if he is a man of ability, of tact,
and of intrepidity, he soon finds that, even under
such circumstances, it is possible to speak successfully.
He finds that there is a great difference between
the effect of written words, which are perused and
reperused in the stillness of the closet, and the effect
of spoken words which, set off by the graces of utterance
and gesture, vibrate for a single moment on the ear.

Page 67

He finds that he may blunder without much chance of
being detected, that he may reason sophistically, and
escape unrefuted. He finds that, even on knotty
questions of trade and legislation, he can, without
reading ten pages, or thinking ten minutes, draw forth
loud plaudits, and sit down with the credit of having
made an excellent speech.... The tendency of
institutions like those of England is to encourage
readiness in public men, at the expense both of fulness
and of exactness. The keenest and most vigorous
minds of every generation, minds often admirably fitted
for the investigation of truth, are habitually employed
in producing arguments such as no man of sense would
ever put into a treatise intended for publication,
arguments which are just good enough to be used once,
when aided by fluent delivery and pointed language.
The habit of discussing questions in this way necessarily
reacts on the intellects of our ablest men, particularly
of those who are introduced into parliament at a very
early age, before their minds have expanded to full
maturity. The talent for debate is developed
in such men to a degree which, to the multitude, seems
as marvellous as the performance of an Italian Improvisatore.

But they are fortunate indeed if they retain unimpaired
the faculties which are required for close reasoning
or for enlarged speculation. Indeed we should
sooner expect a great original work on political science,
such a work, for example, as the Wealth of Nations,
from an apothecary in a country town, or from a minister
in the Hebrides, than from a statesman who, ever since
he was one-and-twenty, had been a distinguished debater
in the House of Commons.

We therefore hail with pleasure, though assuredly
not with unmixed pleasure, the appearance of this
work. That a young politician should, in the
intervals afforded by his parliamentary avocations,
have constructed and propounded, with much study and
mental toil, an original theory on a great problem
in politics, is a circumstance which, abstracted from
all consideration of the soundness or unsoundness of
his opinions, must be considered as highly creditable
to him. We certainly cannot wish that Mr. Gladstone’s
doctrines may become fashionable among public men.
But we heartily wish that his laudable desire to penetrate
beneath the surface of questions, and to arrive, by
long and intent meditation, at the knowledge of great
general laws, were much more fashionable than we at
all expect it to become.

Mr. Gladstone seems to us to be, in many respects,
exceedingly well qualified for philosophical investigation.
His mind is of large grasp; nor is he deficient in
dialectical skill. But he does not give his intellect
fair play. There is no want of light, but a great
want of what Bacon would have called dry light.
Whatever Mr. Gladstone sees is refracted and distorted
by a false medium of passions and prejudices.
His style bears a remarkable analogy to his mode of

Page 68

thinking, and indeed exercises great influence on
his mode of thinking. His rhetoric, though often
good of its kind, darkens and perplexes the logic which
it should illustrate. Half his acuteness and
diligence, with a barren imagination and a scanty
vocabulary, would have saved him from almost all his
mistakes. He has one gift most dangerous to a
speculator, a vast command of a kind of language,
grave and majestic, but of vague and uncertain import;
of a kind of language which affects us much in the
same way in which the lofty diction of the Chorus
of Clouds affected the simple-hearted Athenian.

[Greek: o gae tou phthegmatos, os
hieron, kai semnon, kai teratodes.]

When propositions have been established, and nothing
remains but to amplify and decorate them, this dim
magnificence may be in place. But if it is admitted
into a demonstration, it is very much worse than absolute
nonsense; just as that transparent haze, through which
the sailor sees capes and mountains of false sizes
and in false bearings, is more dangerous than utter
darkness. Now, Mr. Gladstone is fond of employing
the phraseology of which we speak in those parts of
his works which require the utmost perspicuity and
precision of which human language is capable; and
in this way he deludes first himself, and then his
readers. The foundations of his theory which
ought to be buttresses of adamant, are made out of
the flimsy materials which are fit only for perorations.
This fault is one which no subsequent care or industry
can correct. The more strictly Mr. Gladstone
reasons on his premises, the more absurd are the conclusions
which he brings out; and, when at last his good sense
and good nature recoil from the horrible practical
inferences to which this theory leads, he is reduced
sometimes to take refuge in arguments inconsistent
with his fundamental doctrines, and sometimes to escape
from the legitimate consequences of his false principles,
under cover of equally false history.

It would be unjust not to say that this book, though
not a good book, shows more talent than many good
books. It abounds with eloquent and ingenious
passages. It bears the signs of much patient thought.
It is written throughout with excellent taste and
excellent temper; nor does it, so far as we have observed,
contain one expression unworthy of a gentleman, a
scholar, or a Christian. But the doctrines which
are put forth in it appear to us, after full and calm
consideration, to be false, to be in the highest degree
pernicious, and to be such as, if followed out in
practice to their legitimate consequences, would inevitably
produce the dissolution of society; and for this opinion
we shall proceed to give our reasons with that freedom
which the importance of the subject requires, and
which Mr. Gladstone, both by precept and by example,
invites us to use, but, we hope, without rudeness,
and, we are sure, without malevolence.

Page 69

Before we enter on an examination of this theory,
we wish to guard ourselves against one misconception.
It is possible that some persons who have read Mr.
Gladstone’s book carelessly, and others who have
merely heard in conversation, or seen in a newspaper,
that the member for Newark has written in defence
of the Church of England against the supporters of
the voluntary system, may imagine that we are writing
in defence of the voluntary system, and that we desire
the abolition of the Established Church. This
is not the case. It would be as unjust to accuse
us of attacking the Church, because we attack Mr. Gladstone’s
doctrines, as it would be to accuse Locke of wishing
for anarchy, because he refuted Filmer’s patriarchal
theory of government, or to accuse Blackstone of recommending
the confiscation of ecclesiastical property, because
he denied that the right of the rector to tithe was
derived from the Levitical law. It is to be observed,
that Mr. Gladstone rests his case on entirely new
grounds, and does not differ more widely from us than
from some of those who have hitherto been considered
as the most illustrious champions of the Church.
He is not content with the Ecclesiastical Polity,
and rejoices that the latter part of that celebrated
work “does not carry with it the weight of Hooker’s
plenary authority.” He is not content with
Bishop Warburton’s Alliance of Church and State.
“The propositions of that work generally,”
he says, “are to be received with qualification”;
and he agrees with Bolingbroke in thinking that Warburton’s
whole theory rests on a fiction. He is still
less satisfied with Paley’s defence of the Church,
which he pronounces to be “tainted by the original
vice of false ethical principles,” and “full
of the seeds of evil.” He conceives that
Dr. Chalmers has taken a partial view of the subject,
and “put forth much questionable matter.”
In truth, on almost every point on which we are opposed
to Mr. Gladstone, we have on our side the authority
of some divine, eminent as a defender of existing
establishments.

Mr. Gladstone’s whole theory rests on this great
fundamental proposition, that the propagation of religious
truth is one of the principal ends of government,
as government. If Mr. Gladstone has not proved
this proposition, his system vanishes at once.

We are desirous, before we enter on the discussion
of this important question, to point out clearly a
distinction which, though very obvious, seems to be
overlooked by many excellent people. In their
opinion, to say that the ends of government are temporal
and not spiritual is tantamount to saying that the
temporal welfare of man is of more importance than
his spiritual welfare. But this is an entire mistake.
The question is not whether spiritual interests be
or be not superior in importance to temporal interests;
but whether the machinery which happens at any moment
to be employed for the purpose of protecting certain
temporal interests of a society be necessarily such

Page 70

a machinery as is fitted to promote the spiritual
interests of that society. Without a division
of labour the world could not go on. It is of
very much more importance that men should have food
than that they should have pianofortes. Yet it
by no means follows that every pianoforte-maker ought
to add the business of a baker to his own; for, if
he did so, we should have both much worse music and
much worse bread. It is of much more importance
that the knowledge of religious truth should be wisely
diffused than that the art of sculpture should flourish
among us. Yet it by no means follows that the
Royal Academy ought to unite with its present functions
those of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge,
to distribute theological tracts, to send forth missionaries,
to turn out Nollekens for being a Catholic, Bacon for
being a methodist, and Flaxman for being a Swedenborgian.
For the effect of such folly would be that we should
have the worst possible Academy of Arts, and the worst
possible Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge.
The community, it is plain, would be thrown into universal
confusion, if it were supposed to be the duty of every
association which is formed for one good object to
promote every other good object.

As to some of the ends of civil government, all people
are agreed. That it is designed to protect our
persons and our property; that it is designed to compel
us to satisfy our wants, not by rapine, but by industry;
that it is designed to compel us to decide our differences,
not by the strong hand, but by arbitration; that it
is designed to direct our whole force, as that of
one man, against any other society which may offer
us injury; these are propositions which will hardly
be disputed.

Now these are matters in which man, without any reference
to any higher being, or to any future state, is very
deeply interested. Every human being, be he idolater,
Mahometan, Jew, Papist, Socinian, Deist, or Atheist,
naturally loves life, shrinks from pain, desires comforts
which can be enjoyed only in communities where property
is secure. To be murdered, to be tortured, to
be robbed, to be sold into slavery, these are evidently
evils from which men of every religion, and men of
no religion, wish to be protected; and therefore it
will hardly be disputed that men of every religion,
and of no religion, have thus far a common interest
in being well governed.

But the hopes and fears of man are not limited to
this short life and to this visible world. He
finds himself surrounded by the signs of a power and
wisdom higher than his own; and, in all ages and nations,
men of all orders of intellect, from Bacon and Newton,
down to the rudest tribes of cannibals, have believed
in the existence of some superior mind. Thus
far the voice of mankind is almost unanimous.
But whether there be one God, or many, what may be
God’s natural and what His mortal attributes,
in what relation His creatures stand to Him, whether

Page 71

He have ever disclosed Himself to us by any other
revelation than that which is written in all the parts
of the glorious and well ordered world which He has
made, whether His revelation be contained in any permanent
record, how that record should be interpreted, and
whether it have pleased Him to appoint any unerring
interpreter on earth, these are questions respecting
which there exists the widest diversity of opinion,
and respecting some of which a large part of our race
has, ever since the dawn of regular history, been
deplorably in error.

Now here are two great objects: one is the protection
of the persons and estates of citizens from injury;
the other is the propagation of religious truth.
No two objects more entirely distinct can well be
imagined. The former belongs wholly to the visible
and tangible world in which we live; the latter belongs
to that higher world which is beyond the reach of
our senses. The former belongs to this life; the
latter to that which is to come. Men who are
perfectly agreed as to the importance of the former
object, and as to the way of obtaining it, differ as
widely as possible respecting the latter object.
We must, therefore, pause before we admit that the
persons, be they who they may, who are trusted with
power for promotion of the former object, ought always
to use that power for the promotion of the latter
object.

* * * *
*

The truth is, that Mr. Gladstone has fallen into an
error very common among men of less talents than his
own. It is not unusual for a person who is eager
to prove a particular proposition to assume a major
of huge extent, which includes that particular proposition,
without ever reflecting that it includes a great deal
more. The fatal facility with which Mr. Gladstone
multiplies expressions stately and sonorous, but of
indeterminate meaning, eminently qualifies him to practise
this sleight on himself and on his readers. He
lays down broad general doctrines about power, when
the only power of which he is thinking is the power
of governments, and about conjoint action when the
only conjoint action of which he is thinking is the
conjoint action of citizens in a state. He first
resolves on his conclusion. He then makes a major
of most comprehensive dimensions, and having satisfied
himself that it contains his conclusion, never troubles
himself about what else it may contain: and as
soon as we examine it we find that it contains an infinite
number of conclusions, every one of which is a monstrous
absurdity.

It is perfectly true that it would be a very good
thing if all the members of all the associations in
the world were men of sound religious views.
We have no doubt that a good Christian will be under
the guidance of Christian principles, in his conduct
as director of a canal company or steward of a charity
dinner. If he were, to recur to a case which we
have before put, a member of a stage-coach company,

Page 72

he would, in that capacity, remember that “a
righteous man regardeth the life of his beast.”
But it does not follow that every association of men
must, therefore, as such association, profess a religion.
It is evident that many great and useful objects can
be attained in this world only by co-operation.
It is equally evident that there cannot be efficient
co-operation, if men proceed on the principle that
they must not co-operate for one object unless they
agree about other objects. Nothing seems to us
more beautiful or admirable in our social system than
the facility with which thousands of people, who perhaps
agree only on a single point, can combine their energies
for the purpose of carrying that single point.
We see daily instances of this. Two men, one of
them obstinately prejudiced against missions, the
other president of a missionary society, sit together
at the board of a hospital, and heartily concur in
measures for the health and comfort of the patients.
Two men, one of whom is a zealous supporter and the
other a zealous opponent of the system pursued in
Lancaster’s schools, meet at the Mendicity Society,
and act together with the utmost cordiality. The
general rule we take to be undoubtedly this, that it
is lawful and expedient for men to unite in an association
for the promotion of a good object, though they may
differ with respect to other objects of still higher
importance.

* * * *
*

If, indeed, the magistrate would content himself with
laying his opinions and reasons before the people,
and would leave the people, uncorrupted by hope or
fear, to judge for themselves, we should see little
reason to apprehend that his interference in favour
of error would be seriously prejudicial to the interests
of truth. Nor do we, as will hereafter be seen,
object to his taking this course, when it is compatible
with the efficient discharge of his more especial duties.
But this will not satisfy Mr. Gladstone. He would
have the magistrate resort to means which have a great
tendency to make malcontents, to make hypocrites,
to make careless nominal conformists, but no tendency
whatever to produce honest and rational conviction.
It seems to us quite clear that an inquirer who has
no wish except to know the truth is more likely to
arrive at the truth than an inquirer who knows that,
if he decides one way, he shall be rewarded, and that,
if he decides the other way, he shall be punished.
Now, Mr. Gladstone would have governments propagate
their opinions by excluding all dissenters from all
civil offices. That is to say, he would have
governments propagate their opinions by a process
which has no reference whatever to the truth or falsehood
of those opinions, by arbitrarily uniting certain worldly
advantages with one set of doctrines, and certain worldly
inconveniences with another set. It is of the
very nature of argument to serve the interests of
truth; but if rewards and punishments serve the interests
of truth, it is by mere accident. It is very much
easier to find arguments for the divine authority
of the Gospel than for the divine authority of the
Koran. But it is just as easy to bribe or rack
a Jew into Mahometanism as into Christianity.

Page 73

From racks, indeed, and from all penalties directed
against the persons, the property, and the liberty
of heretics, the humane spirit of Mr. Gladstone shrinks
with horror. He only maintains that conformity
to the religion of the state ought to be an indispensable
qualification for office; and he would, unless we
have greatly misunderstood him, think it his duty,
if he had the power, to revive the Test Act, to enforce
it rigorously, and to extend it to important classes
who were formerly exempt from its operation.

This is indeed a legitimate consequence of his principles.
But why stop here? Why not roast dissenters at
slow fires? All the general reasonings on which
this theory rests evidently leads to sanguinary persecution.
If the propagation of religious truth be a principal
end of government, as government; if it be the duty
of government to employ for that end its constitutional
power; if the constitutional power of governments
extends, as it most unquestionably does, to the making
of laws for the burning of heretics; if burning be,
as it most assuredly is, in many cases, a most effectual
mode of suppressing opinions; why should we not burn?
If the relation in which government ought to stand
to the people be, as Mr. Gladstone tells us, a paternal
relation, we are irresistibly led to the conclusion
that persecution is justifiable. For the right
of propagating opinions by punishment is one which
belongs to parents as clearly as the right to give
instruction. A boy is compelled to attend family
worship: he is forbidden to read irreligious books:
if he will not learn his catechism, he is sent to
bed without his supper: if he plays truant at
church-time a task is set him. If he should display
the precocity of his talents by expressing impious
opinions before his brothers and sisters, we should
not much blame his father for cutting short the controversy
with a horse-whip. All the reasons which lead
us to think that parents are peculiarly fitted to
conduct the education of their children, and that
education is the principal end of a parental relation,
lead us also to think that parents ought to be allowed
to use punishment, if necessary, for the purpose of
forcing children, who are incapable of judging for
themselves, to receive religious instruction and to
attend religious worship. Why, then, is this prerogative
of punishment, so eminently paternal, to be withheld
from a paternal government? It seems to us, also,
to be the height of absurdity to employ civil disabilities
for the propagation of an opinion, and then to shrink
from employing other punishments for the same purpose.
For nothing can be clearer than that, if you punish
at all, you ought to punish enough. The pain
caused by punishment is pure unmixed evil, and never
ought to be inflicted, except for the sake of some
good. It is mere foolish cruelty to provide penalties
which torment the criminal without preventing the
crime. Now it is possible, by sanguinary persecution
unrelentingly inflicted, to suppress opinions.
In this way the Albigenses were put down. In
this way the Lollards were put down. In this
way the fair promise of the Reformation was blighted
in Italy and Spain. But we may safely defy Mr.
Gladstone to point out a single instance in which
the system which he recommends has succeeded.

Page 74

* * * *
*

But we must proceed in our examination of his theory.
Having, as he conceives, proved that it is the duty
of every government to profess some religion or other,
right or wrong, and to establish that religion, he
then comes to the question what religion a government
ought to prefer; and he decides this question in favour
of the form of Christianity established in England.
The Church of England is, according to him, the pure
Catholic Church of Christ, which possesses the apostolical
succession of ministers, and within whose pale is to
be found that unity which is essential to truth.
For her decisions he claims a degree of reverence
far beyond what she has ever, in any of her formularies,
claimed for herself; far beyond what the moderate school
of Bossuet demands for the Pope; and scarcely short
of what that school would ascribe to Pope and General
Council together. To separate from her communion
is schism. To reject her traditions or interpretations
of Scripture is sinful presumption.

Mr. Gladstone pronounces the right of private judgment,
as it is generally understood throughout Protestant
Europe, to be a monstrous abuse. He declares
himself favourable, indeed, to the exercise of private
judgment, after a fashion of his own. We have,
according to him, a right to judge all the doctrines
of the Church of England to be sound, but not to judge
any of them to be unsound. He has no objection,
he assures us, to active inquiry into religious questions.
On the contrary, he thinks such inquiry highly desirable,
as long as it does not lead to diversity of opinion;
which is much the same thing as if he were to recommend
the use of fire that will not burn down houses, or
of brandy that will not make men drunk. He conceives
it to be perfectly possible for mankind to exercise
their intellects vigorously and freely on theological
subjects, and yet to come to exactly the same conclusions
with each other and with the Church of England.
And for this opinion he gives, as far as we have been
able to discover, no reason whatever, except that
everybody who vigorously and freely exercises his
understanding on Euclid’s Theorems assents to
them. “The activity of private judgment,”
he truly observes, “and the unity and strength
of conviction in mathematics vary directly as each
other.” On this unquestionable fact he
constructs a somewhat questionable argument.
Everybody who freely inquires agrees, he says, with
Euclid. But the Church is as much in the right
as Euclid. Why, then, should not every free inquirer
agree with the Church? We could put many similar
questions. Either the affirmative or the negative
of the proposition that King Charles wrote the Icon
Basilike is as true as that two sides of a triangle
are greater than the third side. Why, then, do
Dr. Wordsworth and Mr. Hallam agree in thinking two
sides of a triangle greater than the third side, and
yet differ about the genuineness of the Icon Basilike?

Page 75

The state of the exact sciences proves, says Mr. Gladstone,
that, as respects religion, “the association
of these two ideas, activity of inquiry, and variety
of conclusion, is a fallacious one.” We
might just as well turn the argument the other way,
and infer from the variety of religious opinions that
there must necessarily be hostile mathematical sects,
some affirming, and some denying, that the square
of the hypothenuse is equal to the squares of the sides.
But we do not think either the one analogy or the
other of the smallest value. Our way of ascertaining
the tendency of free inquiry is simply to open our
eyes and look at the world in which we live; and there
we see that free inquiry on mathematical subjects
produces unity, and that free inquiry on moral subjects
produces discrepancy. There would undoubtedly
be less discrepancy if inquirers were more diligent
and candid. But discrepancy there will be among
the most diligent and candid, as long as the constitution
of the human mind, and the nature of moral evidence,
continue unchanged. That we have not freedom and
unity together is a very sad thing; and so it is that
we have not wings. But we are just as likely
to see the one defect removed as the other. It
is not only in religion that this discrepancy is found.
It is the same with all matters which depend on moral
evidence, with judicial questions, for example, and
with political questions. All the judges will
work a sum in the rule of three on the same principle,
and bring out the same conclusion. But it does
not follow that, however honest and laborious they
may be, they will all be of one mind on the Douglas
case. So it is vain to hope that there may be
a free constitution under which every representative
will be unanimously elected, and every law unanimously
passed; and it would be ridiculous for a statesman
to stand wondering and bemoaning himself because people
who agree in thinking that two and two make four cannot
agree about the new poor law, or the administration
of Canada.

There are two intelligible and consistent courses
which may be followed with respect to the exercise
of private judgment; the course of the Romanist, who
interdicts private judgment because of its inevitable
inconveniences; and the course of the Protestant, who
permits private judgment in spite of its inevitable
inconveniences. Both are more reasonable than
Mr. Gladstone, who would have private judgment without
its inevitable inconveniences. The Romanist produces
repose by means of stupefaction. The Protestant
encourages activity, though he knows that where there
is much activity there will be some aberration.
Mr. Gladstone wishes for the unity of the fifteenth
century with the active and searching spirit of the
sixteenth. He might as well wish to be in two
places at once.

* * * *
*

We have done; and nothing remains but that we part
from Mr. Gladstone with the courtesy of antagonists
who bear no malice. We dissent from his opinions,
but we admire his talents; we respect his integrity
and benevolence; and we hope that he will not suffer
political avocations so entirely to engross him, as
to leave him no leisure for literature and philosophy.

Page 76

ON MADAME D’ARBLAY

Though the world saw and heard little of Madame D’Arblay
during the last forty years of her life, and though
that little did not add to her fame, there were thousands,
we believe, who felt a singular emotion when they
learned that she was no longer among us. The news
of her death carried the minds of men back at one
leap, clear over two generations, to the time when
her first literary triumphs were won. All those
whom we have been accustomed to revere as intellectual
patriarchs, seemed children when compared with her;
for Burke had sate up all night to read her writings,
and Johnson had pronounced her superior to Fielding,
when Rogers was still a schoolboy, and Southey still
in petticoats. Yet more strange did it seem that
we should just have lost one whose name had been widely
celebrated before any body had heard of some illustrious
men who, twenty, thirty, or forty years ago, were,
after a long and splendid career, borne with honour
to the grave. Yet so it was. Frances Burney
was at the height of fame and popularity before Cowper
had published his first volume, before Person had
gone up to college, before Pitt had taken his seat
in the House of Commons, before the voice of Erskine
had been once heard in Westminster Hall. Since
the appearance of her first work, sixty-two years
had passed; and this interval had been crowded, not
only with political, but also with intellectual revolutions.
Thousands of reputations had, during that period, sprung
up, bloomed, withered, and disappeared. New kinds
of composition had come into fashion, had gone out
of fashion, had been derided, had been forgotten.
The fooleries of Della Crusca, and the fooleries of
Kotzebue, had for a time bewitched the multitude,
but had left no trace behind them; nor had misdirected
genius been able to save from decay the once flourishing
school of Godwin, of Darwin, and of Radcliffe.
Many books, written for temporary effect, had run
through six or seven editions, and had then been gathered
to the novels of Afra Behn, and the epic poems of Sir
Richard Blackmore. Yet the early works of Madame
D’Arblay, in spite of the lapse of years, in
spite of the change of manners, in spite of the popularity
deservedly obtained by some of her rivals, continued
to hold a high place in the public esteem. She
lived to be a classic. Time set on her fame,
before she went hence, that seal which is seldom set
except on the fame of the departed. Like Sir
Condy Rackrent in the tale, she survived her own wake,
and overheard the judgment of posterity.

Page 77

Having always felt a warm and sincere, though not
a blind admiration for her talents, we rejoiced to
learn that her Diary was about to be made public.
Our hopes, it is true, were not unmixed with fears.
We could not forget the fate of the Memoirs of Dr.
Burney, which were published ten years ago. The
unfortunate book contained much that was curious and
interesting. Yet it was received with a cry of
disgust, and was speedily consigned to oblivion.
The truth is, that it deserved its doom. It was
written in Madame D’Arblay’s later style—­the
worst style that has ever been known among men.
No genius, no information, could have saved from proscription
a book so written. We, therefore, open the Diary
with no small anxiety, trembling lest we should light
upon some of that peculiar rhetoric which deforms
almost every page of the Memoirs, and which it is
impossible to read without a sensation made up of mirth,
shame and loathing. We soon, however, discovered
to our great delight that this Diary was kept before
Madame D’Arblay became eloquent. It is,
for the most part, written in her earliest and best
manner; in true woman’s English, clear, natural,
and lively. The two works are lying side by side
before us, and we never turn from the Memoirs to the
Diary without a sense of relief. The difference
is as great as the difference between the atmosphere
of a perfumer’s shop, fetid with lavender water
and jasmine soap, and the air of a heath on a fine
morning in May. Both works ought to be consulted
by every person who wishes to be well acquainted with
the history of our literature and our manners.
But to read the Diary is a pleasure; to read the Memoirs
will always be a task.

* * * *
*

The progress of the mind of Frances Burney, from her
ninth to her twenty-fifth year, well deserves to be
recorded. When her education had proceeded no
further than the horn-book, she lost her mother, and
thenceforward she educated herself. Her father
appears to have been as bad a father as a very honest,
affectionate, and sweet-tempered man can well be.
He loved his daughter dearly; but it never seems to
have occurred to him that a parent has other duties
to perform to children than that of fondling them.
It would indeed have been impossible for him to superintend
their education himself. His professional engagements
occupied him all day. At seven in the morning
he began to attend his pupils, and, when London was
full, was sometimes employed in teaching till eleven
at night. He was often forced to carry in his
pocket a tin box of sandwiches, and a bottle of wine
and water, on which he dined in a hackney-coach while
hurrying from one scholar to another. Two of his
daughters he sent to a seminary at Paris; but he imagined
that Frances would run some risk of being perverted
from the Protestant faith if she were educated in
a Catholic country, and he therefore kept her at home.
No governess, no teacher of any art or of any language,
was provided for her. But one of her sisters
showed her how to write; and, before she was fourteen,
she began to find pleasure in reading.

Page 78

It was not, however, by reading that her intellect
was formed. Indeed, when her best novels were
produced, her knowledge of books was very small.
When at the height of her fame, she was unacquainted
with the most celebrated works of Voltaire and Moliere;
and, what seems still more extraordinary, had never
heard or seen a line of Churchill, who, when she was
a girl, was the most popular of living poets.
It is particularly deserving of observation, that
she appears to have been by no means a novel-reader.
Her father’s library was large; and he had admitted
into it so many books which rigid moralists generally
exclude, that he felt uneasy, as he afterwards owned,
when Johnson began to examine the shelves. But
in the whole collection there was only a single novel,
Fielding’s Amelia.

An education, however, which to most girls would have
been useless, but which suited Fanny’s mind
better than elaborate culture, was in constant progress
during her passage from childhood to womanhood.
The great book of human nature was turned over before
her. Her father’s social position was very
peculiar. He belonged in fortune and station to
the middle class. His daughters seem to have
been suffered to mix freely with those whom butlers
and waiting-maids call vulgar. We are told that
they were in the habit of playing with the children
of a wig-maker who lived in the adjoining house.
Yet few nobles could assemble in the most stately
mansions of Grosvenor Square or St. James’s Square,
a society so various and so brilliant as was sometimes
to be found in Dr. Burney’s cabin. His
mind, though not very powerful or capacious, was restlessly
active; and, in the intervals of his professional
pursuits, he had contrived to lay up much miscellaneous
information. His attainments, the suavity of his
temper, and the gentle simplicity of his manners, had
obtained for him ready admission to the first literary
circles. While he was still at Lynn, he had won
Johnson’s heart by sounding with honest zeal
the praises of the English Dictionary. In London
the two friends met frequently, and agreed most harmoniously.
One tie, indeed, was wanting to their mutual attachment.
Burney loved his own art passionately; and Johnson
just knew the bell of St. Clement’s church from
the organ. They had, however, many topics in
common; and on winter nights their conversations were
sometimes prolonged till the fire had gone out, and
the candles had burned away to the wicks. Burney’s
admiration of the powers which had produced Rasselas
and The Rambler, bordered on idolatry. He gave
a singular proof of this at his first visit to Johnson’s
ill-furnished garret. The master of the apartment
was not at home. The enthusiastic visitor looked
about for some relique which he might carry away;
but he could see nothing lighter than the chairs and
the fire-irons. At last he discovered an old broom,
tore some bristles from the stump, wrapped them in
silver paper, and departed as happy as Louis IX when
the holy nail of St. Denis was found. Johnson,
on the other hand, condescended to growl out that
Burney was an honest fellow, a man whom it was impossible
not to like.

Page 79

Garrick, too, was a frequent visitor in Poland Street
and St. Martin’s Lane. That wonderful actor
loved the society of children, partly from good-nature,
and partly from vanity. The ecstasies of mirth
and terror which his gestures and play of countenance
never failed to produce in a nursery, flattered him
quite as much as the applause of mature critics.
He often exhibited all his powers of mimicry for the
amusement of the little Burneys, awed them by shuddering
and crouching as if he saw a ghost, scared them by
raving like a maniac in St. Lukes’, and then
at once became an auctioneer, a chimney-sweeper, or
an old woman, and made them laugh till the tears ran
down their cheeks.

But it would be tedious to recount the names of all
the men of letters and artists whom Frances Burney
had an opportunity of seeing and hearing. Colman,
Twining, Harris, Baretti, Hawkesworth, Reynolds, Barry,
were among those who occasionally surrounded the tea-table
and supper-tray at her father’s modest dwelling.
This was not all. The distinction which Dr. Burney
had acquired as a musician, and as the historian of
music, attracted to his house the most eminent musical
performers of that age. The greatest Italian singers
who visited England regarded him as the dispenser
of fame in their art, and exerted themselves to obtain
his suffrage. Pachierotti became his intimate
friend. The rapacious Agujari, who sang for nobody
else under fifty pounds an air, sang her best for
Dr. Burney without a fee; and in the company of Dr.
Burney even the haughty and eccentric Gabrielli constrained
herself to behave with civility. It was thus in
his power to give, with scarcely any expense, concerts
equal to those of the aristocracy. On such occasions
the quiet street in which he lived was blocked up
by coroneted chariots, and his little drawing-room
was crowded with peers, peeresses, ministers, and
ambassadors. On one evening, of which we happen
to have a full account, there were present Lord Mulgrave,
Lord Bruce, Lord and Lady Edgecumbe, Lord Barrington
from the War-Office, Lord Sandwich from the Admiralty,
Lord Ashburnham, with his gold key dangling from his
pocket, and the French Ambassador, M. De Guignes,
renowned for his fine person and for his success in
gallantry. But the great show of the night was
the Russian Ambassador, Count Orloff, whose gigantic
figure was all in a blaze with jewels, and in whose
demeanour the untamed ferocity of the Scythian might
be discerned through a thin varnish of French politeness.
As he stalked about the small parlour, brushing the
ceiling with his toupee, the girls whispered to each
other, with mingled admiration and horror, that he
was the favoured lover of his august mistress; that
he had borne the chief part in the revolution to which
she owed her throne; and that his huge hands, now
glittering with diamond rings, had given the last squeeze
to the windpipe of her unfortunate husband.

Page 80

With such illustrious guests as these were mingled
all the most remarkable specimens of the race of lions—­a
kind of game which is hunted in London every spring
with more than Meltonian ardour and perseverance.
Bruce, who had washed down steaks cut from living oxen
with water from the fountains of the Nile, came to
swagger and talk about his travels. Omai lisped
broken English, and made all the assembled musicians
hold their ears by howling Otaheitean love-songs,
such as those with which Oberea charmed her Opano.

With the literary and fashionable society which occasionally
met under Dr. Burney’s roof, Frances can scarcely
be said to have mingled. She was not a musician,
and could therefore bear no part in the concerts.
She was shy almost to awkwardness, and scarcely ever
joined in the conversation. The slightest remark
from a stranger disconcerted her; and even the old
friends of her father who tried to draw her out could
seldom extract more than a Yes or a No. Her figure
was small, her face not distinguished by beauty.
She was therefore suffered to withdraw quietly to
the background, and, unobserved herself, to observe
all that passed. Her nearest relations were aware
that she had good sense, but seem not to have suspected,
that under her demure and bashful deportment were
concealed a fertile invention and a keen sense of the
ridiculous. She had not, it is true, an eye for
the fine shades of character. But every marked
peculiarity instantly caught her notice and remained
engraven on her imagination. Thus, while still
a girl, she had laid up such a store of materials
for fiction as few of those who mix much in the world
are able to accumulate during a long life. She
had watched and listened to people of every class,
from princes and great officers of state down to artists
living in garrets, and poets familiar with subterranean
cook-shops. Hundreds of remarkable persons had
passed in review before her, English, French, German,
Italian, lords and fiddlers, deans of cathedrals and
managers of theatres, travellers leading about newly
caught savages, and singing women escorted by deputy-husbands.

So strong was the impression made on the mind of Frances
by the society which she was in the habit of seeing
and hearing, that she began to write little fictitious
narratives as soon as she could use her pen with ease,
which, as we have said, was not very early. Her
sisters were amused by her stories. But Dr. Burney
knew nothing of their existence; and in another quarter
her literary propensities met with serious discouragement.
When she was fifteen, her father took a second wife.
The new Mrs. Burney soon found out that her daughter-in-law
was fond of scribbling, and delivered several good-natured
lectures on the subject. The advice no doubt
was well-meant, and might have been given by the most
judicious friend; for at that time, from causes to
which we may hereafter advert, nothing could be more
disadvantageous to a young lady than to be known as
a novel-writer. Frances yielded, relinquished
her favourite pursuit, and made a bonfire of all her
manuscripts.[1]

Page 81

[1] There is some difficulty here as to the chronology.
“This
sacrifice,” says the
editor of the Diary, “was made in the young
authoress’s fifteenth
year.” This could not be; for the sacrifice
was the effect, according
to the editor’s own showing, of the
remonstrances of the second
Mrs. Burney; and Frances was in her
sixteenth year when her father’s
second marriage took place.

She now hemmed and stitched from breakfast to dinner
with scrupulous regularity. But the dinners of
that time were early; and the afternoon was her own.
Though she had given up novel-writing, she was still
fond of using her pen. She began to keep a diary,
and she corresponded largely with a person who seems
to have had the chief share in the formation of her
mind. This was Samuel Crisp, an old friend of
her father. His name, well known, near a century
ago, in the most splendid circles of London, has long
been forgotten.

Crisp was an old and very intimate friend of the Burneys.
To them alone was confided the name of the desolate
old hall in which he hid himself like a wild beast
in a den. For them were reserved such remains
of his humanity as had survived the failure of his
play. Frances Burney he regarded as his daughter.
He called her his Fannikin, and she in return called
him her dear Daddy. In truth, he seems to have
done much more than her real father for the development
of her intellect; for though he was a bad poet, he
was a scholar, a thinker, and an excellent counsellor.
He was particularly fond of Dr. Burney’s concerts.
They had, indeed, been commenced at his suggestion,
and when he visited London he constantly attended
them. But when he grew old, and when gout, brought
on partly by mental irritation, confined him to his
retreat, he was desirous of having a glimpse of that
gay and brilliant world from which he was exiled,
and he pressed Fannikin to send him full accounts of
her father’s evening parties. A few of
her letters to him have been published; and it is
impossible to read them without discerning in them
all the powers which afterwards produced Evelina and
Cecilia, the quickness in catching every odd peculiarity
of character and manner, the skill in grouping, the
humour, often richly comic, sometimes even farcical.

Fanny’s propensity to novel-writing had for
a time been kept down. It now rose up stronger
than ever. The heroes and heroines of the tales
which had perished in the flames, were still present
to the eye of her mind. One favourite story,
in particular, haunted her imagination. It was
about a certain Caroline Evelyn, a beautiful damsel
who made an unfortunate love match, and died, leaving
an infant daughter. Frances began to imagine
to herself the various scenes, tragic and comic, through
which the poor motherless girl, highly connected on
one side, meanly connected on the other, might have
to pass. A crowd of unreal beings, good and bad,
grave and ludicrous, surrounded the pretty, timid,

Page 82

young orphan; a coarse sea-captain; an ugly insolent
fop, blazing in a superb court-dress; another fop,
as ugly and as insolent, but lodged on Snow Hill,
and tricked out in second-hand finery for the Hampstead
ball; an old woman, all wrinkles and rouge, flirting
her fan with the air of a Miss of seventeen, and screaming
in a dialect made up of vulgar French and vulgar English;
a poet lean and ragged, with a broad Scotch accent.
By degrees these shadows acquired stronger and stronger
consistence: the impulse which urged Frances
to write became irresistible; and the result was the
history of Evelina.

Then came, naturally enough, a wish, mingled with
many fears, to appear before the public; for, timid
as Frances was, and bashful, and altogether unaccustomed
to hear her own praises, it is clear that she wanted
neither a strong passion for distinction, nor a just
confidence in her own powers. Her scheme was
to become, if possible, a candidate for fame without
running any risk of disgrace. She had no money
to bear the expense of printing. It was therefore
necessary that some bookseller should be induced to
take the risk; and such a bookseller was not readily
found. Dodsley refused even to look at the manuscript
unless he were trusted with the name of the author.
A publisher in Fleet Street, named Lowndes, was more
complaisant. Some correspondence took place between
this person and Miss Burney, who took the name of Grafton,
and desired that the letters addressed to her might
be left at the Orange Coffee-House. But, before
the bargain was finally struck, Fanny thought it her
duty to obtain her father’s consent. She
told him that she had written a book, that she wished
to have his permission to publish [Transcriber’s
note: “published” in original] it
anonymously, but that she hoped that he would not
insist upon seeing it. What followed may serve
to illustrate what we meant when we said that Dr. Burney
was as bad a father as so good-hearted a man could
possibly be. It never seems to have crossed his
mind that Fanny was about to take a step on which
the whole happiness of her life might depend, a step
which might raise her to an honourable eminence, or
cover her with ridicule and contempt. Several
people had already been trusted, and strict concealment
was therefore not to be expected. On so grave
an occasion, it was surely his duty to give his best
counsel to his daughter, to win her confidence, to
prevent her from exposing herself if her book were
a bad one, and, if it were a good one, to see that
the terms which she made with the publisher were likely
to be beneficial to her. Instead of this, he only
stared, burst out a laughing, kissed her, gave her
leave to do as she liked, and never even asked the
name of her work. The contract with Lowndes was
speedily concluded. Twenty pounds were given for
the copyright, and were accepted by Fanny with delight.
Her father’s inexcusable neglect of his duty,
happily caused her no worse evil than the loss of twelve
or fifteen hundred pounds.

Page 83

After many delays Evelina appeared in January 1778.
Poor Fanny was sick with terror, and durst hardly
stir out of doors. Some days passed before any
thing was heard of the book. It had, indeed, nothing
but its own merits to push it into public favour.
Its author was unknown. The house by which it
was published, was not, we believe, held in high estimation.
No body of partisans had been engaged to applaud.
The better class of readers expected little from a
novel about a young lady’s entrance into the
world. There was, indeed, at that time a disposition
among the most respectable people to condemn novels
generally; nor was this disposition by any means without
excuse; for works of that sort were then almost always
silly, and very frequently wicked.

Soon, however, the first faint accents of praise began
to be heard. The keepers of the circulating libraries
reported that every body was asking for Evelina, and
that some person had guessed Anstey to be the Author.
Then came a favourable notice in the London Review;
then another still more favourable in the Monthly.
And now the book found its way to tables which had
seldom been polluted by marble-covered volumes.
Scholars and statesmen who contemptuously abandoned
the crowd of romances to Miss Lydia Languish and Miss
Sukey Saunter, were not ashamed to own that they could
not tear themselves away from Evelina. Fine carriages
and rich liveries, not often seen east of Temple Bar,
were attracted to the publisher’s shop in Fleet
Street. Lowndes was daily questioned about the
author; but was himself as much in the dark as any
of the questioners. The mystery, however, could
not remain a mystery long. It was known to brothers
and sisters, aunts and cousins: and they were
far too proud and too happy to be discreet. Dr.
Burney wept over the book in rapture. Daddy Crisp
shook his fist at his Fannikin in affectionate anger
at not having been admitted to her confidence.
The truth was whispered to Mrs. Thrale; and then it
began to spread fast.

The book had been admired while it was ascribed to
men of letters long conversant with the world, and
accustomed to composition. But when it was known
that a reserved, silent young woman had produced the
best work of fiction that had appeared since the death
of Smollett, the acclamations were redoubled.
What she had done was, indeed, extraordinary.
But, as usual, various reports improved the story till
it became miraculous. Evelina, it was said, was
the work of a girl of seventeen. Incredible as
this tale was, it continued to be repeated down to
our own time. Frances was too honest to confirm
it. Probably she was too much a woman to contradict
it; and it was long before any of her detractors thought
of this mode of annoyance. Yet there was no want
of low minds and bad hearts in the generation which
witnessed her first appearance. There was the
envious Kenrick and the savage Wolcot, the asp George
Steevens and the polecat John Williams. It did

Page 84

not, however, occur to them to search the parish-register
of Lynn, in order that they might be able to twit
a lady with having concealed her age. That truly
chivalrous exploit was reserved for a bad writer of
our own time, whose spite she had provoked by not
furnishing him with materials for a worthless edition
of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, some sheets of
which our readers have doubtless seen round parcels
of better books.

But we must return to our story. The triumph
was complete. The timid and obscure girl found
herself on the highest pinnacle of fame. Great
men, on whom she had gazed at a distance with humble
reverence, addressed her with admiration, tempered
by the tenderness due to her sex and age. Burke,
Windham, Gibbon, Reynolds, Sheridan, were among her
most ardent eulogists. Cumberland acknowledged
her merit, after his fashion, by biting his lips and
wriggling in his chair whenever her name was mentioned.
But it was at Streatham that she tasted, in the highest
perfection, the sweets of flattery, mingled with the
sweets of friendship. Mrs. Thrale, then at the
height of prosperity and popularity—­with
gay spirits, quick wit, showy though superficial acquirements,
pleasing though not refined manners, a singularly amiable
temper, and a loving heart—­felt towards
Fanny as towards a younger sister. With the Thrales
Johnson was domesticated. He was an old friend
of Dr. Burney; but he had probably taken little notice
of Dr. Burney’s daughters, and Fanny, we imagine,
had never in her life dared to speak to him, unless
to ask whether he wanted a nineteenth or a twentieth
cup of tea. He was charmed by her tale, and preferred
it to the novels of Fielding, to whom, indeed, he
had always been grossly unjust. He did not, indeed,
carry his partiality so far as to place Evelina by
the side of Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison; yet
he said that his favourite had done enough to have
made even Richardson feel uneasy. With Johnson’s
cordial approbation of the book was mingled a fondness,
half gallant half paternal, for the writer; and his
fondness his age and character entitled him to show
without restraint. He began by putting her hand
to his lips. But soon he clasped her in his huge
arms, and implored her to be a good girl. She
was his pet, his dear love, his dear little Burney,
his little character-monger. At one time, he broke
forth in praise of the good taste of her caps.
At another time, he insisted on teaching her Latin.
That, with all his coarseness and irritability, he
was a man of sterling benevolence, has long been acknowledged.
But how gentle and endearing his deportment could
be, was not known till the Recollections of Madame
D’Arblay were published.

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We have mentioned a few of the most eminent of those
who paid their homage to the author of Evelina.
The crowd of inferior admirers would require a catalogue
as long as that in the second book of the Iliad.
In that catalogue would be Mrs. Cholmondeley, the
sayer of odd things, and Seward, much given to yawning,
and Baretti, who slew the man in the Haymarket, and
Paoli, talking broken English, and Langton, taller
by the head than any other member of the club, and
Lady Millar, who kept a vase wherein fools were wont
to put bad verses, and Jerningham, who wrote verses
fit to be put into the vase of Lady Millar, and Dr.
Franklin—­ not, as some have dreamed, the
great Pennsylvanian Dr. Franklin, who could not then
have paid his respects to Miss Burney without much
risk of being hanged, drawn, and quartered, but Dr.
Franklin the less—­

It would not have been surprising if such success
had turned even a strong head, and corrupted even
a generous and affectionate nature. But, in the
Diary, we can find no trace of any feeling inconsistent
with a truly modest and amiable disposition.
There is, indeed, abundant proof that Frances enjoyed,
with an intense, though a troubled, joy, the honours
which her genius had won; but it is equally clear that
her happiness sprang from the happiness of her father,
her sister, and her dear Daddy Crisp. While flattered
by the great, the opulent, and the learned, while
followed along the Steyne at Brighton and the Pantiles
at Tunbridge Wells by the gaze of admiring crowds,
her heart seems to have been still with the little
domestic circle in St. Martin’s Street.
If she recorded with minute diligence all the compliments,
delicate and coarse, which she heard wherever she
turned, she recorded them for the eyes of two or three
persons who had loved her from infancy, who had loved
her in obscurity, and to whom her fame gave the purest
and most exquisite delight. Nothing can be more
unjust than to confound these outpourings of a kind
heart, sure of perfect sympathy, with the egotism
of a blue-stocking, who prates to all who come near
her about her own novel or her own volume of sonnets.

It was natural that the triumphant issue of Miss Burney’s
first venture should tempt her to try a second.
Evelina, though it had raised her fame, had added
nothing to her fortune. Some of her friends urged
her to write for the stage. Johnson promised
to give her his advice as to the composition.
Murphy, who was supposed to understand the temper of
the pit as well as any man of his time, undertook
to instruct her as to stage-effect. Sheridan
declared that he would accept a play from her without
even reading it. Thus encouraged she wrote a comedy
named The Witlings. Fortunately it was never
acted or printed. We can, we think, easily perceive
from the little which is said on the subject in the
Diary, that The Witlings would have been damned, and

Page 86

that Murphy and Sheridan thought so, though they were
too polite to say so. Happily Frances had a friend
who was not afraid to give her pain. Crisp, wiser
for her than he had been for himself, read the manuscript
in his lonely retreat, and manfully told her that
she had failed, that to remove blemishes here and
there would be useless, that the piece had abundance
of wit but no interest, that it was bad as a whole,
that it would remind every reader of the Femmes
Savantes, which, strange to say, she had never
read, and that she could not sustain so close a comparison
with Moliere. This opinion, in which Dr. Burney
concurred, was sent to Frances in what she called
a “hissing, groaning, cat-calling epistle.”
But she had too much sense not to know that it was
better to be hissed and cat-called by her Daddy than
by a whole sea of heads in the pit of Drury-Lane Theatre;
and she had too good a heart not to be grateful for
so rare an act of friendship. She returned an
answer which shows how well she deserved to have a
judicious, faithful, and affectionate adviser.
“I intend,” she wrote, “to console
myself for your censure by this greatest proof I have
ever received of the sincerity, candour, and, let
me add, esteem, of my dear daddy. And as I happen
to love myself rather more than my play, this consolation
is not a very trifling one. This, however, seriously
I do believe, that when my two daddies put their heads
together to concert that hissing, groaning, cat-calling
epistle they sent me, they felt as sorry for poor little
Miss Bayes as she could possibly do for herself.
You see I do not attempt to repay your frankness with
the air of pretended carelessness. But, though
somewhat disconcerted just now, I will promise not
to let my vexation live out another day. Adieu,
my dear daddy! I won’t be mortified, and
I won’t be downed; but I will be proud
to find I have, out of my own family, as well as in
it, a friend who loves me well enough to speak plain
truth to me.”

Frances now turned from her dramatic schemes to an
undertaking far better suited to her talents.
She determined to write a new tale, on a plan excellently
contrived for the display of the powers in which her
superiority to other writers lay. It was in truth
a grand and various picture-gallery, which presented
to the eye a long series of men and women, each marked
by some strong peculiar feature. There were avarice
and prodigality, the pride of blood and the pride of
money, morbid restlessness and morbid apathy, frivolous
garrulity, supercilious silence, a Democritus to laugh
at every thing, and a Heraclitus to lament over every
thing. The work proceeded fast, and in twelve
months was completed. It wanted something of
the simplicity which had been among the most attractive
charms of Evelina; but it furnished ample proof that
the four years which had elapsed since Evelina appeared,
had not been unprofitably spent. Those who saw
Cecilia in manuscript pronounced it the best novel

Page 87

of the age. Mrs. Thrale laughed and wept over
it. Crisp was even vehement in applause, and offered
to insure the rapid and complete success of the book
for half a crown. What Miss Burney received for
the copyright is not mentioned in the Diary; but we
have observed several expressions from which we infer
that the sum was considerable. That the sale
would be great nobody could doubt; and Frances now
had shrewd and experienced advisers, who would not
suffer her to wrong herself. We have been told
that the publishers gave her two thousand pounds,
and we have no doubt that they might have given a still
larger sum without being losers.

Cecilia was published in the summer of 1782.
The curiosity of the town was intense. We have
been informed by persons who remember those days,
that no romance of Sir Walter Scott was more impatiently
awaited, or more eagerly snatched from the counters
of the booksellers. High as public expectation
was, it was amply satisfied; and Cecilia was placed,
by general acclamation, among the classical novels
of England.

Miss Burney was now thirty. Her youth had been
singularly prosperous; but clouds soon began to gather
over that clear and radiant dawn. Events deeply
painful to a heart so kind as that of Frances, followed
each other in rapid succession. She was first
called upon to attend the death-bed of her best friend,
Samuel Crisp. When she returned to St. Martin’s
Street, after performing this melancholy duty, she
was appalled by hearing that Johnson had been struck
with paralysis; and, not many months later, she parted
from him for the last time with solemn tenderness.
He wished to look on her once more; and on the day
before his death she long remained in tears on the
stairs leading to his bedroom, in the hope that she
might be called in to receive his blessing. But
he was then sinking fast, and, though he sent her an
affectionate message, was unable to see her. But
this was not the worst. There are separations
far more cruel than those which are made by death.
Frances might weep with proud affection for Crisp and
Johnson. She had to blush as well as to weep
for Mrs. Thrale.

Life, however, still smiled upon her. Domestic
happiness, friendship, independence, leisure, letters,
all these things were hers; and she flung them all
away.

* * * *
*

Then the prison was opened, and Frances was free once
more. Johnson, as Burke observed, might have
added a striking page to his poem on the Vanity of
Human Wishes, if he had lived to see his little Burney
as she went into the palace and as she came out of
it.

Page 88

The pleasures, so long untasted, of liberty, of friendship,
of domestic affection, were almost too acute for her
shattered frame. But happy days and tranquil
nights soon restored the health which the Queen’s
toilette and Madame Schwellenberg’s card-table
had impaired. Kind and anxious faces surrounded
the invalid. Conversation the most polished and
brilliant revived her spirits. Travelling was
recommended to her; and she rambled by easy journeys
from cathedral to cathedral, and from watering-place
to watering-place. She crossed the New Forest,
and visited Stonehenge and Wilton, the cliffs of Lyme,
and the beautiful valley of Sidmouth. Thence
she journeyed by Powderham Castle, and by the ruins
of Glastonbury Abbey, to Bath, and from Bath, when
the winter was approaching, returned well and cheerful
to London. There she visited her old dungeon,
and found her successor already far on the way to the
grave, and kept to strict duty, from morning till midnight,
with a sprained ankle and a nervous fever.

At this time England swarmed with French exiles driven
from their country by the Revolution. A colony
of these refugees settled at Juniper Hall in Surrey,
not far from Norbury Park, where Mr. Lock, an intimate
friend of the Burney family, resided. Frances
visited Norbury, and was introduced to the strangers.
She had strong prejudices against them; for her Toryism
was far beyond, we do not say that of Mr. Pitt, but
that of Mr. Reeves; and the inmates of Juniper Hall
were all attached to the constitution of 1791, and
were therefore more detested by the Royalists of the
first emigration than Petion or Marat. But such
a woman as Miss Burney could no longer resist the
fascination of that remarkable society. She had
lived with Johnson and Windham, with Mrs. Montague
and Mrs. Thrale. Yet she was forced to own that
she had never heard conversation before. The
most animated eloquence, the keenest observation,
the most sparkling wit, the most courtly grace, were
united to charm her. For Madame de Stael was
there, and M. de Talleyrand. There too was M.
de Narbonne, a noble representative of French aristocracy;
and with M. de Narbonne was his friend and follower
General D’Arblay, an honourable and amiable
man, with a handsome person, frank soldier-like manners,
and some taste for letters.

The prejudices which Frances had conceived against
the constitutional royalists of France rapidly vanished.
She listened with rapture to Talleyrand and Madame
de Stael, joining with M. D’Arblay in execrating
the Jacobins, and in weeping for the unhappy Bourbons,
took French lessons from him, fell in love with him,
and married him on no better provision [Transcriber’s
note: “pro-provision” in original]
than a precarious annuity of one hundred pounds.

* * * *
*

We now turn from the life of Madame D’Arblay
to her writings. There can, we apprehend, be
little difference of opinion as to the nature of her
merit, whatever differences may exist as to its degree.
She was emphatically what Johnson called her, a character-monger.
It was in the exhibition of human passions and whims
that her strength lay; and in this department of art
she had, we think, very distinguished skill.

Page 89

Highest among those who have exhibited human nature
by means of dialogue, stands Shakespeare. His
variety is like the variety of nature, endless diversity,
scarcely any monstrosity. The characters of which
he has given us an impression, as vivid as that which
we receive from the characters of our own associates,
are to be reckoned by scores. Yet in all these
scores hardly one character is to be found which deviates
widely from the common standard, and which we should
call very eccentric if we met it in real life.
The silly notion that every man has one ruling passion,
and that this clue, once known, unravels all the mysteries
of his conduct, finds no countenance in the plays of
Shakespeare. There man appears as he is, made
up of a crowd of passions, which contend for the mastery
over him, and govern him in turn. What is Hamlet’s
ruling passion? Or Othello’s? Or Harry
the Fifth’s? Or Wolsey’s? Or
Lear’s? Or Shylock’s? Or Benedick’s?
Or Macbeth’s? Or that of Cassius?
Or that of Falconbridge? But we might go on for
ever. Take a single example—­Shylock.
Is he so eager for money as to be indifferent to revenge?
Or so eager for revenge as to be indifferent to money?
Or so bent on both together as to be indifferent to
the honour of his nation and the law of Moses?
All his propensities are mingled with each other;
so that, in trying to apportion to each its proper
part, we find the same difficulty which constantly
meets us in real life. A superficial critic may
say, that hatred is Shylock’s ruling passion.
But how many passions have amalgamated to form that
hatred? It is partly the result of wounded pride:
Antonio has called him dog. It is partly the result
of covetousness: Antonio has hindered him of
half a million; and, when Antonio is gone, there will
be no limit to the gains of usury. It is partly
the result of national and religious feeling:
Antonio has spit on the Jewish gaberdine; and the
oath of revenge has been sworn by the Jewish Sabbath.
We might go through all the characters which we have
mentioned, and through fifty more in the same way;
for it is the constant manner of Shakespeare to represent
the human mind as lying, not under the absolute dominion
of one despotic propensity, but under a mixed government,
in which a hundred powers balance each other.
Admirable as he was in all parts of his art, we most
admire him for this, that, while he has left us a
greater number of striking portraits than all other
dramatists put together, he has scarcely left us a
single caricature.

Shakespeare has had neither equal nor second.
But among the writers who, in the point which we have
noticed, have approached nearest to the manner of
the great master, we have no hesitation in placing
Jane Austen, a woman of whom England is justly proud.
She has given us a multitude of characters, all, in
a certain sense, commonplace, all such as we meet
every day. Yet they are all as perfectly discriminated
from each other as if they were the most eccentric

Page 90

of human beings. There are, for example, four
clergymen, none of whom we should be surprised to
find in any parsonage in the kingdom, Mr. Edward Ferrars,
Mr. Henry Tilney, Mr. Edmund Bertram, and Mr. Elton.
They are all specimens of the upper part of the middle
class. They have all been liberally educated.
They all lie under the restraints of the same sacred
profession. They are all young. They are
all in love. Not one of them has any hobbyhorse,
to use the phrase of Sterne. Not one has a ruling
passion, such as we read of in Pope. Who would
not have expected them to be insipid likenesses of
each other? No such thing. Harpagon is not
more unlike to Jourdain, Joseph Surface is not more
unlike to Sir Lucius O’Trigger, than every one
of Miss Austen’s young divines to all his reverend
brethren. And almost all this is done by touches
so delicate, that they elude analysis, that they defy
the powers of description, and that we know them to
exist only by the general effect to which they have
contributed.

A line must be drawn, we conceive, between artists
of this class, and those poets and novelists whose
skill lies in the exhibiting of what Ben Jonson called
humours. The words of Ben are so much to the purpose,
that we will quote them—­

When some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his affects, his spirits, and his
powers,
In their confluxions all to run one way,
This may be truly said to be a humour.

There are undoubtedly persons, in whom humours such
as Ben describes have attained a complete ascendency.
The avarice of Elwes, the insane desire of Sir Egerton
Brydges for a barony to which he had no more right
than to the crown of Spain, the malevolence which long
meditation on imaginary wrongs generated in the gloomy
mind of Bellingham, are instances. The feeling
which animated Clarkson and other virtuous men against
the slave-trade and slavery, is an instance of a more
honourable kind.

Seeing that such humours exist, we cannot deny that
they are proper subjects for the imitations of art.
But we conceive that the imitation of such humours,
however skilful and amusing, is not an achievement
of the highest order; and, as such humours are rare
in real life, they ought, we conceive, to be sparingly
introduced into works which profess to be pictures
of real life. Nevertheless, a writer may show
so much genius in the exhibition of these humours,
as to be fairly entitled to a distinguished and permanent
rank among classics. The chief seats of all,
however, the places on the dais and under the canopy,
are reserved for the few who have excelled in the
difficult art of portraying characters in which no
single feature is extravagantly overcharged.

Page 91

If we have expounded the law soundly, we can have
no difficulty in applying it to the particular case
before us. Madame D’Arblay has left us
scarcely any thing but humours. Almost every one
of her men and women has some one propensity developed
to a morbid degree. In Cecilia, for example,
Mr. Delvile never opens his lips without some allusion
to his own birth and station; or Mr. Briggs, without
some allusion to the hoarding of money; or Mr. Hobson,
without betraying the self-indulgence and self-importance
of a purse-proud upstart; or Mr. Simkins, without
uttering some sneaking remark for the purpose of currying
favour with his customers; or Mr. Meadows, without
expressing apathy and weariness of life; or Mr. Albany,
without declaiming about the vices of the rich and
the misery of the poor; or Mrs. Belfield, without some
indelicate eulogy on her son; or Lady Margaret, without
indicating jealousy of her husband. Morrice is
all skipping, officious impertinence, Mr. Gosport
all sarcasm, Lady Honoria all lively prattle, Miss
Larolles all silly prattle. If ever Madame D’Arblay
aimed at more, as in the character of Monckton, we
do not think that she succeeded well.

We are, therefore, forced to refuse to Madame D’Arblay
a place in the highest rank of art; but we cannot
deny that, in the rank to which she belonged, she
had few equals, and scarcely any superior. The
variety of humours which is to be found in her novels
is immense; and though the talk of each person separately
is monotonous, the general effect is not monotony,
but a very lively and agreeable diversity. Her
plots are rudely constructed and improbable, if we
consider them in themselves. But they are admirably
framed for the purpose of exhibiting striking groups
of eccentric characters, each governed by his own peculiar
whim, each talking his own peculiar jargon, and each
bringing out by opposition the oddities of all the
rest. We will give one example out of many which
occur to us. All probability is violated in order
to bring Mr. Delvile, Mr. Briggs, Mr. Hobson, and
Mr. Albany into a room together. But when we
have them there, we soon forget probability in the
exquisitely ludicrous effect which is produced by the
conflict of four old fools, each raging with a monomania
of his own, each talking a dialect of his own, and
each inflaming all the others anew every time he opens
his mouth.

Yet one word more. It is not only on account
of the intrinsic merit of Madame D’Arblay’s
early works that she is entitled to honourable mention.
Her appearance is an important epoch in our literary
history. Evelina was the first tale written by
a woman, and purporting to be a picture of life and
manners, that lived or deserved to live. The Female
Quixote is no exception. That work has undoubtedly
great merit, when considered as a wild satirical harlequinade;
but, if we consider it as a picture of life and manners,
we must pronounce it more absurd than any of the romances
which it was designed to ridicule.

Page 92

Indeed, most of the popular novels which preceded
Evelina, were such as no lady would have written;
and many of them were such as no lady could without
confusion own that she had read. The very name
of novel was held in horror among religious people.
In decent families which did not profess extraordinary
sanctity, there was a strong feeling against all such
works. Sir Anthony Absolute, two or three years
before Evelina appeared, spoke the sense of the great
body of sober fathers and husbands, when he pronounced
the circulating library an evergreen tree of diabolical
knowledge. This feeling, on the part of the grave
and reflecting, increased the evil from which it had
sprung. The novelist, having little character
to lose, and having few readers among serious people,
took without scruple liberties which in our generation
seem almost incredible.

Miss Burney did for the English novel what Jeremy
Collier did for the English drama; and she did it
in a better way. She first showed that a tale
might be written in which both the fashionable and
the vulgar life of London might be exhibited with
great force, and with broad comic humour, and which
yet should not contain a single line inconsistent with
rigid morality, or even with virgin delicacy.
She took away the reproach which lay on a most useful
and delightful species of composition. She vindicated
the right of her sex to an equal share in a fair and
noble province of letters. Several accomplished
women have followed in her track. At present,
the novels which we owe to English ladies form no
small part of the literary glory of our country.
No class of works is more honourably distinguished
by fine observation, by grace, by delicate wit, by
pure moral feeling. Several among the successors
of Madame D’Arblay have equalled her; two, we
think, have surpassed her. But the fact that
she has been surpassed, gives her an additional claim
to our respect and gratitude; for in truth we owe
to her, not only Evelina, Cecilia, and Camilla, but
also Mansfield Park and the Absentee.

ANONYMOUS ON WORDSWORTH

[From The Edinburgh Review, October, 1807]

Poems, in Two Volumes. By W. WORDSWORTH.
London, 1807.

This author is known to belong to a certain brotherhood
of poets, who have haunted for some years about the
lakes of Cumberland; and is generally looked upon,
we believe, as the purest model of the excellences
and peculiarities of the school which they have been
labouring to establish. Of the general merits
of that school, we have had occasion to express our
opinion pretty fully, in more places than one, and
even to make some allusion to the former publications
of the writer now before us. We are glad, however,
to have found an opportunity of attending somewhat
more particularly to his pretentions.

Page 93

The Lyrical Ballads were unquestionably popular; and,
we have no hesitation in saying, deservedly popular:
for in spite of their occasional vulgarity, affectation,
and silliness, they were undoubtedly characterised
by a strong spirit of originality, of pathos, and natural
feeling; and recommended to all good minds by the clear
impression which they bore of the amiable disposition
and virtuous principles of the author. By the
help of these qualities, they were enabled, not only
to recommend themselves to the indulgence of many
judicious readers, but even to beget among a pretty
numerous class of persons, a sort of admiration of
the very defects by which they were attended.
It was on this account chiefly, that we thought it
necessary to set ourselves against the alarming innovation.
Childishness, conceit, and affectation, are not of
themselves very popular or attractive; and though mere
novelty has sometimes been found sufficient to give
them a temporary currency, we should have had no fear
of their prevailing to any dangerous extent, if they
had been graced with no more seductive accompaniments.
It was precisely because the perverseness and bad taste
of this new school was combined with a great deal of
genius and of laudable feeling, that we were afraid
of their spreading and gaining ground among us, and
that we entered into the discussion with a degree
of zeal and animosity which some might think unreasonable
towards authors, to whom so much merit had been conceded.
There were times and moods, indeed, in which we were
led to suspect ourselves of unjustifiable severity,
and to doubt, whether a sense of public duty had not
carried us rather too far in reprobation of errors,
that seemed to be atoned for, by excellences of no
vulgar description. At other times the magnitude
of these errors—­the disgusting absurdities
into which they led their feebler admirers, and the
derision and contempt which they drew from the more
fastidious, even upon the merits with which they were
associated, made us wonder more than ever at the perversity
by which they were retained, and regret that we had
not declared ourselves against them with still more
formidable and decided hostility.

In this temper of mind, we read the annonce
of Mr. Wordsworth’s publication with a good
deal of interest and expectation, and opened his volumes
with greater anxiety, than he or his admirers will
probably give us credit for. We have been greatly
disappointed certainly as to the quality of the poetry;
but we doubt whether the publication has afforded
so much satisfaction to any other of his readers:—­it
has freed us from all doubt or hesitation as to the
justice of our former censures, and has brought the
matter to a test, which we cannot help hoping may be
convincing to the author himself.

Page 94

Mr. Wordsworth, we think, has now brought the question,
as to the merit of his new school of poetry, to a
very fair and decisive issue. The volumes before
us are much more strongly marked by its peculiarities
than any former publication of the fraternity.
In our apprehension, they are, on this very account,
infinitely less interesting or meritorious; but it
belongs to the public, and not to us, to decide upon
their merit, and we will confess, that so strong is
our conviction of their obvious inferiority, and the
grounds of it, that we are willing for once to waive
our right of appealing to posterity, and to take the
judgment of the present generation of readers, and
even of Mr. Wordsworth’s former admirers, as
conclusive on this occasion. If these volumes,
which have all the benefit of the author’s former
popularity, turn out to be nearly as popular as the
lyrical ballads—­if they sell nearly to the
same extent—­or are quoted and imitated
among half as many individuals, we shall admit that
Mr. Wordsworth has come much nearer the truth in his
judgment of what constitutes the charm of poetry, than
we had previously imagined—­and shall institute
a more serious and respectful inquiry into his principles
of composition than we have yet thought necessary.
On the other hand,—­if this little work,
selected from the compositions of five maturer years,
and written avowedly for the purpose of exalting a
system, which has already excited a good deal of attention,
should be generally rejected by those whose prepossessions
were in its favour, there is room to hope, not only
that the system itself will meet with no more encouragement,
but even that the author will be persuaded to abandon
a plan of writing, which defrauds his industry and
talents of their natural reward.

Putting ourselves thus upon our country, we certainly
look for a verdict against this publication; and have
little doubt indeed of the result, upon a fair consideration
of the evidence contained in these volumes. To
accelerate that result, and to give a general view
of the evidence, to those into whose hands the record
may not have already fallen, we must now make a few
observations and extracts.

We shall not resume any of the particular discussions
by which we formerly attempted to ascertain the value
of the improvements which this new school has effected
in poetry: but shall lay the grounds of our opposition,
for this time, a little more broadly. The end
of poetry, we take it, is to please—­and
the same, we think, is strictly applicable to every
metrical composition from which we receive pleasure,
without any laborious exercise of the understanding.
Their pleasure may, in general, be analysed into three
parts—­that which we receive from the excitement
of Passion or emotion—­that which is derived
from the play of Imagination, or the easy exercise
of Reason—­and that which depends on the
character and qualities of the Diction. The two
first are the vital and primary springs of poetical
delight, and can scarcely require explanation to anyone.
The last has been alternately over-rated and undervalued
by the possessors of the poetical art, and is in such
low estimation with the author now before us and his
associates, that it is necessary to say a few words
in explanation of it.

Page 95

One great beauty of diction exists only for those
who have some degree of scholarship or critical skill.
This is what depends on the exquisite propriety
of the words employed, and the delicacy with which
they are adapted to the meaning which is to be expressed.
Many of the finest passages in Virgil and Pope derive
their principal charm from the fine propriety of their
diction. Another source of beauty, which extends
only to the more instructed class of readers, is that
which consists in the judicious or happy application
of expressions which have been sanctified by the use
of famous writers, or which bear the stamp of a simple
or venerable antiquity. There are other beauties
of diction, however, which are perceptible by all—­the
beauties of sweet sounds and pleasant associations.
The melody of words and verses is indifferent to no
reader of poetry; but the chief recommendation of
poetical language is certainly derived from those
general associations, which give it a character of
dignity or elegance, sublimity or tenderness.
Everyone knows that there are low and mean expressions,
as well as lofty and grave ones; and that some words
bear the impression of coarseness and vulgarity, as
clearly as others do of refinement and affection.
We do not mean, of course, to say anything in defiance
of the hackneyed commonplace of ordinary versemen.
Whatever might have been the original character of
these unlucky phrases, they are now associated with
nothing but ideas of schoolboy imbecility and vulgar
affectation. But what we do maintain is, that
much of the most popular poetry in the world owes its
celebrity chiefly to the beauty of its diction; and
that no poetry can be long or generally acceptable,
the language of which is coarse, inelegant, or infantine.

From this great source of pleasure, we think the readers
of Mr. Wordsworth are in great measure cut off.
His diction has nowhere any pretensions to elegance
or dignity; and he has scarcely ever condescended
to give the grace of correctness or melody to his
versification. If it were merely slovenly or neglected,
however, all this might be endured. Strong sense
and powerful feeling will ennoble any expressions;
or, at least, no one who is capable of estimating these
higher merits, will be disposed to mark these little
defects. But, in good truth, no man, now-a-days,
composes verses for publication, with a slovenly neglect
of their language. It is a fine and laborious
manufacture, which can scarcely ever be made in a hurry;
and the faults which it has, may, for the most part,
be set down to bad taste or incapacity, rather than
to carelessness or oversight. With Mr. Wordsworth
and his friends it is plain that their peculiarities
of diction are things of choice, and not of accident.
They write as they do, upon principle and system;
and it evidently costs them much pains to keep down
to the standard which they have proffered themselves.
They are to the full as much mannerists, too, as the

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poetasters who ring changes on the commonplaces of
magazine versification; and all the difference between
them is that they borrow their phrases from a different
and a scantier gradus ad Parnassum. If
they were, indeed, to discard all imitation and set
phraseology, and bring in no words merely for show
or for metre,—­as much, perhaps, might be
gained in freedom and originality, as would infallibly
be lost in allusion and authority; but, in point of
fact, the new poets are just as much borrowers as the
old; only that, instead of borrowing from the more
popular passages of their illustrious predecessors,
they have preferred furnishing themselves from vulgar
ballads and plebian nurseries.

Their peculiarities of diction alone, are enough,
perhaps, to render them ridiculous; but the author
before us really seems anxious to court this literary
martyrdom by a device still more infallible,—­we
mean that of connecting his most lofty, tender, or
impassioned conceptions, with objects and incidents
which the greater part of his readers will probably
persist in thinking low, silly, or uninteresting.
Whether this is done from affectation and conceit
alone, or whether it may not arise, in some measure,
from the self-illusion of a mind of extraordinary
sensibility, habituated to solitary meditation, we
cannot undertake to determine. It is possible
enough, we allow, that the sights of a friend’s
garden-spade, of a sparrow’s-nest, or a man gathering
leeches, might really have suggested to such a mind
a train of powerful impressions and interesting reflections;
but it is certain, that, to most minds, such associations
will always appear forced, strained, and unnatural;
and that the composition in which it is attempted to
exhibit them, will always have the air of parody,
or ludicrous and affected singularity. All the
world laughs at Eligiac stanzas to a sucking pig—­a
Hymn on Washing-day, Sonnets to one’s grandmother—­or
Pindarics on gooseberry-pie; and yet, we are afraid,
it will not be quite easy to persuade Mr. Wordsworth,
that the same ridicule must infallibly attach to most
of the pathetic pieces in these volumes. To satisfy
our readers, however, as to the justice of this and
our other anticipations, we shall proceed without
further preface, to lay before them a short view of
their contents.

The first is a kind of ode “to the Daisy,—­”
very flat, feeble, and affected; and in diction as
artificial, and as much encumbered with heavy expletives
as the theme of an unpractised schoolboy....

The scope of the piece is to say, that the flower
is found everywhere; and that it has suggested many
pleasant thoughts to the author—­some chime
of fancy, “wrong or right”—­some
feeling of devotion more or less—­and
other elegancies of the same stamp....

The next is called “Louisa,” and begins
in this dashing and affected manner.

I met Louisa in the shade; And, having
seen that lovely maid, Why should I fear to say
That she is ruddy, fleet and strong; And down
the rocks can leap along, Like rivulets in May?
I. 7.

Does Mr. Wordsworth really imagine that this is more
natural or engaging than the ditties of our common
song-writers?...

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By and by, we have a piece of namby-pamby “to
the Small Celandine,” which we should almost
have taken for a professed imitation of one of Mr.
Phillips’s prettyisms....

Further on, we find an “Ode to Duty,”
in which the lofty vein is very unsuccessfully attempted.
This is the concluding stanza.

Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost
wear
The Godhead’s
most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile
upon thy face;
Flowers laugh before thee
on their beds;
And fragrance in thy footing
treads;
Thou dost preserve the stars
from wrong;
And the most ancient heavens through thee
are fresh and strong. I. 73.

The two last lines seem to be utterly without meaning;
at least we have no sort of conception in what sense
Duty can be said to keep the old skies fresh,
and the stars from wrong.

The next piece, entitled “The Beggars,”
may be taken, in fancy, as a touchstone of Mr. Wordsworth’s
merit. There is something about it that convinces
us it is a favourite of the author’s; though
to us, we will confess, it appears to be a very paragon
of silliness and affectation.... “Alice
Fell” is a performance of the same order....
If the printing of such trash as this be not felt
as an insult on the public taste, we are afraid it
cannot be insulted.

After this follows the longest and most elaborate
poem in the volume, under the title of “Resolution
and Independence.” The poet roving about
on a common one fine morning, falls into pensive musings
on the fate of the sons of song, which he sums up
in this fine distich.

We poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof comes in the end despondency
and madness. I, p. 92.

In the midst of his meditations—­

I saw a man before me unawares,
The oldest man he seemed that ever wore
grey hairs....

The very interesting account, which he is lucky enough
at last to comprehend, fills the poet with comfort
and admiration; and, quite glad to find the old man
so cheerful, he resolves to take a lesson of contentedness
from him; and the poem ends with this pious ejaculation—­

“God,” said I, “be my
help and stay secure;
I’ll think of the leech-gatherer
on the lonely moor.” I, p. 97.

We defy the bitterest enemy of Mr. Wordsworth to produce
anything at all parallel to this from any collection
of English poetry, or even from the specimens of his
friend Mr. Southey....

The first poems in the second volume were written
during a tour in Scotland. The first is a very
dull one about Rob Roy, but the title that attracted
us most was “An Address to the Sons of Burns,”
after visiting their father’s grave. Never
was anything, however, more miserable.... The
next is a very tedious, affected performance, called
“The Yarrow Unvisited.” ... After
this we come to some ineffable compositions, which

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the poet has entitled, “Moods of my own Mind.”
... We have then a rapturous mystical ode to
the Cuckoo; in which the author, striving after force
and originality, produces nothing but absurdity ...
after this there is an address to a butterfly....
We come next to a long story of a “Blind Highland
Boy,” who lived near an arm of the sea, and had
taken a most unnatural desire to venture on that perilous
element. His mother did all she could to prevent
him; but one morning, when the good woman was out
of the way, he got into a vessel of his own, and pushed
out from the shore.

In such a vessel ne’er before
Did human creature leave the shore.
II, p. 72.

And then we are told, that if the sea should get rough,
“a beehive would be ship as safe.”
“But say, what was it?” a poetical interlocutor
is made to exclaim most naturally; and here followeth
the answer, upon which all the pathos and interest
of the story depend.

A HOUSEHOLD TUB, like one of those
Which women use to wash their clothes!!
II, p. 72.

This, it will be admitted, is carrying the matter
as far as it will go; nor is there anything,—­down
to the wiping of shoes or the evisceration of chickens,
which may not be introduced in poetry, if this is
tolerated....

Afterwards come some stanzas about an echo repeating
a cuckoo’s voice.... Then we have Elegiac
stanzas “to the spade of a friend,” beginning—­

Spade! with which Wilkinson hath till’d
his lands.

But too dull to be quoted any further.

After this there is a minstrel’s song, on the
Restoration of Lord Clifford the Shepherd, which is
in a very different strain of poetry; and then the
volume is wound up with an “Ode,” with
no other title but the motto Paulo majora canamus.
This is, beyond all doubt, the most illegible and
unintelligible part of the publication. We can
pretend to no analysis or explanation of it....

We have thus gone through this publication, with a
view to enable our readers to determine, whether the
author of these verses which have now been exhibited,
is entitled to claim the honours of an improver or
restorer of our poetry, and to found a new school to
supersede or new-model all our maxims on the subject.
If we were to stop here, we do not think that Mr.
Wordsworth, or his admirers, would have any reason
to complain; for what we have now quoted is undeniably
the most peculiar and characteristic part of his publication,
and must be defended and applauded if the merit or
originality of his system is to be seriously maintained.
In our opinion, however, the demerit of that system
cannot be fairly appreciated, until it be shown, that
the author of the bad verses which we have already
extracted, can write good verses when he pleases;
and that, in point of fact, he does always write good
verses, when, by any account, he is led to abandon
his system, and to transgress the laws of that school
which he would fain establish on the ruin of all existing
authority.

Page 99

The length to which our extracts and observations
have already extended, necessarily restrains us within
more narrow limits in this part of our citations;
but it will not require much labour to find a pretty
decided contrast to some of the passages we have already
detailed. The song on the restoration of Lord
Clifford is put into the mouth of an ancient minstrel
of the family; and in composing it, the author was
led, therefore, almost irresistibly to adopt the manner
and phraseology that is understood to be connected
with that sort of composition, and to throw aside
his own babyish incidents and fantastical sensibilities....

All English writers of sonnets have imitated Milton;
and, in this way, Mr. Wordsworth, when he writes sonnets,
escapes again from the trammels of his own unfortunate
system; and the consequence is, that his sonnets are
as much superior to the greater part of his other poems,
as Milton’s sonnets are superior to his....

When we look at these, and many still finer passages,
in the writings of this author, it is impossible not
to feel a mixture of indignation and compassion, at
that strange infatuation which has bound him up from
the fair exercise of his talents, and withheld from
the public the many excellent productions that would
otherwise have taken the place of the trash now before
us. Even in the worst of these productions, there
are, no doubt, occasional little traits of delicate
feeling and original fancy; but these are quite lost
and obscured in the mass of childishness and insipidity
with which they are incorporated, nor can anything
give us a more melancholy view of the debasing effects
of this miserable theory, than that it has given ordinary
men a right to wonder at the folly and presumption
of a man gifted like Mr. Wordsworth, and made him
appear, in his second avowed publication, like a bad
imitator of the worst of his former productions.

We venture to hope, that there is now an end of this
folly; and that, like other follies, it will be found
to have cured itself by the extravagances resulting
from its unbridled indulgence. In this point of
view, the publication of the volumes before us may
ultimately be of service to the good cause of literature.
Many a generous rebel, it is said, has been reclaimed
to his allegiance by the spectacle of lawless outrage
and excess presented in the conduct of the insurgents;
and we think there is every reason to hope, that the
lamentable consequences which have resulted from Mr.
Wordsworth’s open violation of the established
laws of poetry, will operate as a wholesome warning
to those who might otherwise have been seduced by
his example, and be the means of restoring to that
antient and venerable code its due honour and authority.

ON MATURIN’S “MELMOTH”

Page 100

It was said, we remember, of Dr. Darwin’s Botanic
Garden—­that it was the sacrifice of Genius
in the Temple of False Taste; and the remark may be
applied to the work before us, with the qualifying
clause, that in this instance the Genius is less obvious,
and the false taste more glaring. No writer of
good judgment would have attempted to revive the defunct
horrors of Mrs. Radcliffe’s School of Romance,
or the demoniacal incarnations of Mr. Lewis:
But, as if he were determined not to be arraigned
for a single error only, Mr. Maturin has contrived
to render his production almost as objectionable in
the manner as it is in the matter. The construction
of his story, which is singularly clumsy and inartificial,
we have no intention to analyze:—­many will
probably have perused the work, before our review
reaches them; and to those who have not, it may be
sufficient to announce, that the imagination of the
author runs riot, even beyond the usual license of
romance;—­that his hero is a modern Faustus,
who has bartered his soul with the powers of darkness
for protracted life, and unlimited worldly enjoyment;—­his
heroine, a species of insular goddess, a virgin Calypso
of the Indian ocean, who, amid flowers and foliage,
lives upon figs and tamarinds; associates with peacocks,
loxias and monkeys; is worshipped by the occasional
visitants of her island; finds her way to Spain, where
she is married to the aforesaid hero by the hand of
a dead hermit, the ghost of a murdered domestic being
the witness of their nuptials; and finally dies in
the dungeons of the Inquisition at Madrid!—­To
complete this phantasmagoric exhibition, we are presented
with sybils and misers; parricides; maniacs in abundance;
monks with scourges pursuing a naked youth streaming
with blood; subterranean Jews surrounded by the skeletons
of their wives and children; lovers blasted by lightning;
Irish hags, Spanish grandees, shipwrecks, caverns,
Donna Claras and Donna Isidoras, all opposed to each
other in glaring and violent contrast, and all their
adventures narrated with the same undeviating display
of turgid, vehement, and painfully elaborated language.
Such are the materials, and the style of this expanded
nightmare: And as we can plainly perceive, among
a certain class of writers, a disposition to haunt
us with similar apparitions, and to describe them with
a corresponding tumor of words, we conceive it high
time to step forward and abate a nuisance which threatens
to become a besetting evil, unless checked in its
outset.

Political changes were not the sole cause of the rapid
degeneracy in letters that followed the Augustan era
of Rome. Similar corruptions and decay have succeeded
to the intellectual eminence of other nations; and
we might be almost led to conclude, that mental as
well as physical power, after attaining a certain
perfection, became weakened by expansion, and sunk
into a state of comparative imbecility, until time
and circumstance gave it a new progressive impetus.

Page 101

One great cause of this deterioration is the insatiable
thirst for novelty, which, becoming weary even of
excellence, will “sate itself in a celestial
bed, and prey on garbage.” In the torpidity
produced by an utter exhaustion of sensual enjoyment,
the Arreoi Club of Otaheite is recorded to have found
a miserable excitement, by swallowing the most revolting
filth; and the jaded intellectual appetites of more
civilized communities will sometimes seek a new stimulus
in changes almost as startling. Some adventurous
writer, unable to obtain distinction among a host of
competitors, all better qualified than himself to win
legitimate applause, strikes out a fantastic or monstrous
innovation; and arrests the attention of many who
would fall asleep over monotonous excellence.
Imitators are soon found;—­fashion adopts
the new folly;—­the old standard of perfection
is deemed stale and obsolete;—­and thus,
by degrees, the whole literature of a country becomes
changed and deteriorated. It appears to us, that
we are now labouring in a crisis of this nature.
In our last Number, we noticed the revolution in our
poetry; the transition from the lucid terseness and
exquisite polish of Pope and Goldsmith, to the rambling,
diffuse, irregular, and imaginative style of composition
by which the present era is characterized; and we
might have added, that a change equally complete, though
diametrically opposite in its tendency, has been silently
introduced into our prose. In this we have oscillated
from freedom to restraint;—­from the easy,
natural, and colloquial style of Swift, Addison and
Steele, to the perpetually strained, ambitious, and
overwrought stiffness, of which the author we are
now considering affords a striking exemplification.
“He’s knight o’ the shire, and represents
them all.” There is not the smallest keeping
in his composition:—­less solicitous what
he shall say, than how he shall say it, he exhausts
himself in a continual struggle to produce effect
by dazzling, terrifying, or surprising. Annibal
Caracci was accused of an affectation of muscularity,
and an undue parade of anatomical knowledge, even
upon quiescent figures: But the artist whom we
are now considering has no quiescent figures:—­even
his repose is a state of rigid tension, if not extravagant
distortion. He is the Fuseli of novelists.
Does he deem it necessary to be energetic, he forthwith
begins foaming at the mouth, and falling into convulsions;
and this orgasm is so often repeated, and upon such
inadequate occasions, that we are perpetually reminded
of the tremendous puerilities of the Della Cruscan
versifiers, or the ludicrous grand eloquence of the
Spaniard, who tore a certain portion of his attire,
“as if heaven and earth were coming together.”
In straining to reach the sublime, he perpetually
takes that single unfortunate step which conducts him
to the ridiculous —­a failure which, in
a less gifted author, might afford a wicked amusement
to the critic, but which, when united with such undoubted
genius as the present work exhibits, must excite a
sincere and painful regret in every admirer of talent.

Page 102

Whatever be the cause, the fact, we think, cannot
be disputed, that a peculiar tendency to this gaudy
and ornate style, exists among the writers of Ireland.
Their genius runs riot in the wantonness of its own
uncontrolled exuberance;—­their imagination,
disdaining the restraint of judgment, imparts to their
literature the characteristics of a nation in one
of the earlier stages of civilization and refinement.
The florid imagery, gorgeous diction, and Oriental
hyperboles, which possess a sort of wild propriety
in the vehement sallies of Antar the Bedoween chieftain
of the twelfth century, become cold extravagance and
floundering fustian in the mouth of a barrister of
the present age; and we question whether any but a
native of the sister island would have ventured upon
the experiment of their adoption. Even in the
productions of Mr. Moore, the sweetest lyric poet
of this or perhaps any age, this national peculiarity
is not infrequently perceptible; and we were compelled,
in our review of his Lalla Rookh, a subject which justified
the introduction of much Eastern splendour and elaboration,
to point out the excessive finery, the incessant sparkle
and efflorescence by which the attention of the reader
was fatigued, and his senses overcome. He rouged
his roses, and poured perfume upon his jessamines,
until we fainted under the oppression of beauty and
odour, and were ready to “die of a rose in aromatic
pain.”

Dryden, in alluding to the metaphysical poets, exclaims
“rather than all things wit, let none be there":—­though
we would not literally adopt this dictum, we can safely
confirm the truth of the succeeding lines—­

Men doubt, because so thick they lie,
If those be stars that paint the Galaxy:—­

And we scruple not to avow, whatever contempt may
be expressed for our taste by the advocates of the
toiling and turgid style, both in and out of Ireland,
that the prose works which we have lately perused with
the greatest pleasure, so far as their composition
was concerned, have been Belzoni’s Travels,
and Salame’s Account of the Attack upon Algiers.
Unable, from their insufficient mastery of our tongue,
to rival the native manufacture of stiff and laborious
verbosity, these foreigners have contented themselves
with the plainest and most colloquial language that
was consistent with a clear exposition of their meaning;—­a
practice to which Swift was indebted for the lucid
and perspicuous character of his writings, and which
alone has enabled a great living purveyor of “twopenny
trash” to retain a certain portion of popularity,
in spite of his utter abandonment of all consistency
and public principle. If the writers to whom
we are alluding will not condescend to this unstudied
and familiar mode of communing with the public, let
them at least have the art to conceal their art, and
not obtrude the conviction that they are more anxious
to display themselves than inform their readers; and
let them, above all things, consent to be intelligible
to the plainest capacity; for though speech, according
to the averment of a wily Frenchman, was given to
us to conceal our thoughts, no one has yet ventured
to extend the same mystifying definition to the art
of writing ...

Page 103

After this, let us no longer smile at the furious
hyperboles of Della Crusca upon Mrs. Robinson’s
eyes. In the same strain we are told of a convent
whose “walls sweat, and its floors quiver,”
when a contumacious brother treads them;—­and
when the parents of the same personage are torn from
his room by the Director of the convent, we are informed
that “the rushing of their robes as he dragged
them out, seemed like the whirlwind that attends the
presence of the destroying angel.” In a
similar spirit, of pushing every thing to extremes
when he means to be impressive, the author is sometimes
offensively minute; as when he makes the aforesaid
persecuted monk declare, that “the cook had learned
the secret of the convent (that of tormenting those
whom they had no longer hopes of commanding), and
mixed the fragments he threw to me with ashes, hair,
and dust;”—­and sometimes the extravagance
of his phrases becomes simply ludicrous. Two
persons are trying to turn a key—­“It
grated, resisted; the lock seemed invincible.
Again we tried with cranched teeth, indrawn breath,
and fingers stripped almost to the bone—­in
vain.” And yet, after they had almost stripped
their fingers to the bone, they succeed in turning
that which they could not move when their hands were
entire.

We have said that Mr. Maturin had contrived to render
his work as objectionable in the matter as in the
manner; and we proceed to the confirmation of our
assertion. We do not arraign him solely for the
occasional indecorousness of his conceptions, or the
more offensive tone of some of his colloquies, attempted
to be palliated by the flimsy plea, that they are,
appropriate in the mouths that utter them. Dr.
Johnson, as a proof of the total suppression of the
reasoning faculty in dreams, used to cite one of his
own, wherein he imagined himself to be holding an
argument with an adversary, whose superior powers filled
him with a mortification which a moment’s reflection
would have dissipated, by reminding him that he himself
supplied the repartees of his opponent as well as
his own. In his waking dreams, Mr. Maturin is
equally the parent of all the parties who figure in
his Romance; and, though not personally responsible
for their sentiments, he is amenable to the bar of
criticism for every phrase or thought which transgresses
the bounds of decorum, or violates the laws that regulate
the habitual intercourse of polished society.
It is no defence to say, that profane or gross language
is natural to the characters whom he embodies.
Why does he select such? It may be proper in
them; but what can make it proper to us? There
are wretches who never open their lips but to blaspheme;
but would any author think himself justified in filling
his page with their abominations? It betrays
a lamentable deficiency of tact and judgment, to imagine,
as the author of Melmoth appears to do, that he may
seize upon nature in her most unhallowed or disgusting
moods, and dangle her in the eyes of a decorous and

Page 104

civilized community. We shall not stop to stigmatize,
as it deserves, the wild and flagrant calumnies which
he insinuates against three-fourths of his countrymen,
by raking in the long-forgotten rubbish of Popery
for extinct enormities, which he exaggerates as the
inevitable result, rather than the casual abuse of
the system, and brands with an intolerant zeal, quite
as uncharitable as that which he condemns. These
faults are either so peculiar to the individual, or
in their nature so obviously indefensible, as to repel
rather than invite imitation. But there is another
peculiarity in the productions of this gentleman which
claims a more detailed notice, because it seems likely
to have extensive effects in corrupting others:
—­we mean his taste for horrible and revolting
subjects. We thought we had supped full of this
commodity; but it seems as if the most ghastly and
disgusting portion of the meal was reserved for the
present day, and its most hideous concoction for the
writer before us,—­who is never so much
in his favourite element as when he can “on horror’s
head horrors accumulate.” He assimilates
the sluggish sympathies of his readers to those of
sailors and vulgar ballad readers, who cannot be excited
to an interest in the battle of the Arethusa, unless
they learn that “her sails smoaked with brains,
and her scuppers ran blood;”—­a line
which threatens him with formidable competitors from
before the mast. Mere physical horror, unalleviated
by an intense mental interest, or redeeming charities
of the heart, may possess a certain air of originality,
not from the want of ability in former writers to delineate
such scenes, but from then-deference to the “multaque
tolles ex oculis” of Horace; from the conviction
of their utter unfitness for public exhibition.
There is, however, a numerous class of inferior caterers
to the public, ready to minister to any appetite, however
foul and depraved, if they be once furnished with
a precedent; and we foresee an inundation of blood
and abomination if they be not awed or ridiculed into
silence. We have quietly submitted to these inflictions
from two or three distinguished writers, whose talents
may extenuate, though they cannot justify, such outrages
upon feeling. When regular artists and professors
conduct us into their dissecting room, the skill with
which they anatomise may reconcile us to the offensiveness
of the operation; but if butchers and resurrection-men
are to drag us into their shambles, while they mangle
human carcases with their clumsy and unhallowed hands,
the stoutest spectators must turn from the exhibition
with sickness and disgust.

Were any proof wanting that this Golgotha style of
writing is likely to become contagious, and to be
pushed to a more harrowing extravagance at each successive
imitation, Mr. Maturin would himself supply it....

Page 105

We have omitted this miscreant’s flippant allusion
to Madame de Sevigne and his own damnation, uttered
in a spirit which (to use the author’s own words
upon another occasion), “mingled ridicule with
horror, and seemed like a Harlequin in the infernal
regions flirting with the furies:”—­But
we must not forget to mention, as little characteristic
touches in this scene of preposterous horrors, that
the monster who describes it was also a parricide,
and that the female, on whose dying agonies he had
feasted, was his only sister! After this appalling
extract, we need not pursue our quotations from pages
which, as more than one of the personages say of themselves,
seem to swim in blood and fire; and we shall conclude
with the following passage from a dream—­

The next moment I was chained to my chair
again,—­the fires were lit, the bells
rang out, the litanies were sung;—­my feet
were scorched to a cinder,—­my muscles
cracked, my blood and marrow hissed, my flesh consumed
like shrinking leather,—­the bones of my
leg hung two black withering and moveless sticks
in the ascending blaze;—­it ascended, caught
my hair,—­I was crowned with fire,—­my
head was a ball of molten metal, my eyes flashed
and melted in their sockets:—­I opened my
mouth, it drank fire,—­I closed it, the fire
was within,—­and still the bells rang
on, and the crowd shouted, and the king and queen,
and all the nobility and priesthood looked on, and
we burned and burned! I was a cinder, body
and soul, in my dream. II. 301.

These, and other scenes equally wild and abominable,
luckily counteract themselves;—­they present
such a Fee-fa-fum for grown up people, such a burlesque
upon tragic horrors, that a sense of the ludicrous
irresistibly predominates over the terrific; and, to
avoid disgust, our feelings gladly take refuge in
contemptuous laughter. Pathos like this may affect
women, and people of weak nerves, with sickness at
the stomach;—­it may move those of stouter
fibre to scornful derision; but we doubt whether,
in the whole extensive circle of novel readers, it
has ever drawn a single tear. The Society for
the Suppression of Mendicity has fortunately cleared
our streets of the offensive vagrants who used to
thrust their mangled limbs and putrid sores into our
faces to extort from our disgust what they could not
wring from our compassion:—­Be it our
care to suppress those greater nuisances who, infesting
the high ways of literature, would attempt, by a still
more revolting exhibition, to terrify or nauseate
us out of those sympathies which they might not have
the power to awaken by any legitimate appeal.

Page 106

Let it not be imagined, from any thing we have now
said, that we think meanly of Mr. Maturin’s
genius and abilities. It is precisely because
we hold both in respect that we are sincerely anxious
to point out their misapplication; and we have extended
our observations to a greater length than we contemplated,
partly because we fear that his strong though unregulated
imagination, and unlimited command of glowing language,
may inflict upon us a herd of imitators who, “possessing
the contortions of the Sybil without her inspiration,”
will deluge us with dull, turgid, and disgusting enormities;—­and
partly because we are not without hopes that our animadversions,
offered in a spirit of sincerity, may induce the Author
himself to abandon this new Apotheosis of the old
Raw-head-and-bloody-bones, and assume a station in
literature more consonant to his high endowments,
and to that sacred profession to which, we understand,
he does honour by the virtues of his private life.

THE QUARTERLY REVIEW

If Macaulay represents a new Edinburgh from
the days of Jeffrey, Brougham, and Sydney Smith, the
variety of criticism embraced by the Quarterly
is even more startling. There was more malice,
and far coarser personalities in the early days, and
almost continuously while Gifford, Croker, and Lockhart
held the reins: it is—­almost certainly—­
among these three that the responsibility for our “anonymous”
group of onslaughts may be distributed. The two
earliest appreciations of Jane Austen (from Scott
and Whately) offer an interlude—­actually
in the same period—­which positively startles
us by the honesty of its attempt at fair criticism
and the entire freedom from personality.

Gladstone’s interesting recognition of Tennyson,
and the “Church in Arms” against Darwin
(so ably pleaded by Wilberforce), belong to yet another
school of criticism which comes much nearer to our
day, though retaining the solemnity, the prolixity,
and the ex cathedra assumption of authority
with which all the Reviews began their career; and
is singularly cautious in its independence.

WILLIAM GIFFORD

(1757-1826)

Gifford was the editor of the Quarterly from
its foundation in February, 1809, until September,
1824, and undoubtedly established its reputation for
scurrility. It is probable that more reviews were
written, or directly inspired, by him than have been
actually traced to his pen; and, in any case, as Leigh
Hunt puts it, he made it his business to

See
that others
Misdeem and miscontrue, like miscreant
brothers;
Misquote, and misplace, and mislead, and
misstate,
Misapply, misinterpret, misreckon, misdate,
Missinform, misconjecture, misargue, in
short
Miss all that is good, that ye miss not
the court.

Gifford was hated even more than his associates; not
only, we fear, for his venal sycophancy, but because
he had been apprenticed to a shoemaker and never concealed
the lowness of his origin. Moreover, “the
little man, dumpled up together and so ill-made as
to seem almost deformed,” received from Fortune—­

Page 107

One eye not overgood,
Two sides that to their cost have stood
A ten years’ hectic cough,
Aches, stitches, all the various ills
That swell the devilish doctor’s
bills,
And sweep poor mortals off.

Scott is almost alone in his generosity towards the
learning and industry of an editor who helped to make
infamous the title of critic. His original poems
(The Baviad and The Moeviad) have a certain
sledge-hammer merit; and he did yeoman service by suppressing
the Della Cruscans.

It was Gifford also “who did the butchering
business in the Anti-Jacobin.” He was far
heavier, in bludgeoning, than Jeffrey; while Hazlitt
epitomized his principles of criticism with his accustomed
vigour:—­“He believes that modern literature
should wear the fetters of classical antiquity; that
truth is to be weighed in the scales of opinion and
prejudice; that power is equivalent to right; that
genius is dependent on rules; that taste and refinement
of language consist in word-catching.”

* * * *
*

Gifford’s review of Ford’s Weber
is, perhaps, no more than can be expected of the man
who had edited Massinger six years before he
wrote it; and produced a Ben Jonson in 1816
and a Ford in 1827. Of these works Thomas
Moore exclaimed “What a canker’d carle
it is! Strange that a man should be able to lash
himself up into such a spiteful fury, not only against
the living but the dead, with whom he engages in a
sort of sciomachy in every page. Poor
dull and dead Malone is the shadow at which he thrusts
his ‘Jonson,’ as he did at poor Monck Mason,
still duller and deader, in his Massinger.”
Mr. A.H. Bullen, again, remarks of his Ford,
“Gifford was so intent on denouncing the inaccuracy
of others that he frequently failed to secure accuracy
himself.... In reading the old dramatists we
do not want to be distracted by editorial invectives
and diatribes.”

The review of Endymion called forth Byron’s
famous apostrophe to—­

John Keats, who was killed off by one
critique
Just as he really promised something great,
If not intelligible, without Greek
Contrived to talk about the
gods of late
Much as they might have been supposed
to speak.
Poor fellow! his was an untoward
fate;
’Tis strange the mind, that very
fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuff’d
out by one article.

It is but just to say, however, that the Blackwood
review of the same poem, printed below, was scarcely
less virulent; and later critics have scouted the
notion of the poet not having more strength of mind
than he is credited with by Byron. It is strange
to notice that De Quincey found in Endymion
“the very midsummer madness of affectation, of
false vapoury sentiment, and of fantastic effeminacy”;
while one is ashamed for the timidity of the publisher
who chose to return all unsold copies to George Keats
because of “the ridicule which has, time after
time, been showered upon it.”

Page 108

JOHN WILSON CROKER

(1780-1857)

Croker was certainly unfortunate in his enemies, though
they have given him immortality. The contemptible
Rigby in Disraeli’s Coningsby (admittedly
drawn from him) is scarcely more damaging to his reputation
than the sound, if prejudiced, onslaught of Macaulay’s
review, of which we find echoes, after twelve years,
in the same essayist’s Madame D’Arblay.
Dr. Hill tells us that he “added considerably
to our knowledge of Johnson,” yet he was a thoroughly
bad editor and had no real sympathy with either the
subject or the author of that incomparable “Life”:
through his essentially low mind. He was not a
scholar, and he was inaccurate.

Croker was intimately associated with the Quarterly
from its foundation until 1857, retaining his bitterness
and spite to the year of his death. But he was
a born fighter, and never happier than in the heat
of controversy. That he secured the friendship
of Scott, Peel, and Wellington must go to prove that
his political, and literary prejudices, had not destroyed
altogether his private character. He is credited
with being the first writer to use the word “conservatives”
in the Quarterly, January, 1830. He was
a member of the Irish Bar, M.P. for Dublin, Acting
Chief Secretary for Ireland, Secretary of the Admiralty
(where his best work was accomplished), and a Privy
Councillor.

* * * *
*

The veiled sarcasm of his attack on Sydney Smith
was only to be expected from a Tory reviewer, and
was probably inflamed by that heated loyalty to the
Church which characterised his paper.

Macaulay had certainly provoked his retaliation,
and we may notice here the same eager partisanship
of Church and State, pervading even his personal malice.

JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART

(1794-1854)

It is to be regretted that Lockhart, who is so honourably
remembered by his great Life of Scott, his
“fine and animated translation” of Spanish
Ballads, and his neglected—­but powerful—­Adam
Blair, should be so intimately associated with
the black record of the Quarterly. He
was also a contributor to Blackwood from October,
1817, succeeding Gifford in the editorial chair of
Mr. Murray’s Review in 1825 until 1853.

But Lockhart was “more than a satirist and a
snarler.” His polished jibes were more
mischievous than brutal. “This reticent,
sensitive, attractive, yet dangerous youth ... slew
his victims mostly by the midnight oil, not by any
blaze of gaiety, or in the accumulative fervour of
social sarcasm. From him came most of those sharp
things which the victims could not forget....
Lockhart put in his sting in a moment, inveterate,
instantaneous, with the effect of a barbed dart, yet
almost, as it seemed, with the mere intention of giving
point to his sentences, and no particular feeling
at all.”

Page 109

Carlyle describes him as “a precise, brief,
active person of considerable faculty, which however,
had shaped itself gigmanically only. Fond
of quizzing, yet not very maliciously.
Has a broad, black brow, indicating force and penetration,
but the lower half of the face diminishing into the
character at best of distinctness, almost of triviality.”

* * * *
*

There is certainly a good deal of perversity about
the abuse of Vathek, so startlingly combined
with almost immoderate eulogy: to which the discriminating
enthusiasm of his Coleridge affords a pleasing contrast.

It should be noticed that Lockhart has also been credited
with the bitter critical part of the Jane Eyre
review, printed below—­of which any man
ought to have been ashamed—­as Miss Rigby
(afterwards Lady Eastlake) is believed to have written
“the part about the governess.” He
probably had a hand in the Blackwood series on “The
Cockney School of Poetry” (see below); and,
in some ways, those reviews are more characteristic.

SIR WALTER SCOTT

(1771-1832)

It would be out of place here to enter upon any biography
or criticism of the author of Waverley, or
for that matter of Jane Austen. It is sufficient
to notice that Scott has found something generous to
say (in diaries, letters, or formal criticism) on
every writer he had occasion to mention, and that
in his somewhat neglected, but frequently quoted,
Lives of the Novelists, a striking pre-eminence
was given to women; particularly Mrs. Radcliffe and
Clara Reeve. Indeed, the essay on Mrs. Radcliffe,
a “very novel and rather heretical revelation”
is “probably the best in the whole set.”

We remember, too, the famous passage in his General
Preface to the Waverley Novels:—­“without
being so presumptuous as to hope to emulate the rich
humour, pathetic tenderness and admirable tact of my
accomplished friend, I felt that something might be
attempted for my own country, of the same kind with
that which Miss Edgeworth so fortunately achieved
for Ireland";—­an ambition of which the modesty
only equals the success achieved.

In “appreciating” Jane Austen, indeed,
Scott is far more cautious, if not apologetic, than
any critic of to-day would dream of being; but, when
we remember the prejudices then existing against women
writers (despite the popularity of Madame D’Arblay)
and the well-nigh universal neglect accorded the author
of Pride and Prejudice, we should perhaps rather
marvel at the independent sincerity of his pronounced
praise. The article, at any rate, has historic
significance, as the first serious recognition of
her immortal work.

RICHARD WHATELY

(1787-1863)

Page 110

The “dogmatical and crotchety” Archbishop
of Dublin was looked at askance by the extreme Evangelicals
of his day (though Thomas Arnold has eulogised his
holiness), and there is no doubt that his theology,
however able and sincere, was mainly inspired by the
“daylight of ordinary reason and of historical
fact,” opposed to the dogmas of tradition.
He combated sceptical criticism by an ingenious parody
entitled “Historical Doubts relative to Napoleon
Buonaparte,” and his epigram on the majority
of preachers—­that “they aim at nothing
and they hit it,” proves his freedom from any
touch of sacerdotalism. His “Rhetoric,”
his “Logic,” and his “Political Economy”
were praised by so eminent a judge as John Stuart
Mill, though criticised by Hamilton; and Lecky remarks
on the “admirable lucidity of his style.”

His work, however, was as a whole too fragmentary
to become standard, and he regarded it himself as
“the mission of his life to make up cartridges
for others to fire.”

* * * *
*

We may notice that in writing of Jane Austen,
only six years after Scott, though still measured
and judicial, he permits himself a much more assured
attitude of applause; and the article affords most
valuable indication of the steady progress by which
her masterpieces achieved the supremacy now acknowledged
by all.

WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE

(1809-1898)

It would be no less impertinent, and unnecessary,
to dwell in these pages upon the political, or literary,
work of the greatest of modern premiers. It is
sufficient to recall the certainty which used to follow
a notice by Gladstone of a large and immediate rise
in sales. Mr. John Morley remarking that Gladstone’s
“place is not in literary or critical history,
but elsewhere,” reminds us that his style was
sometimes called Johnsonian, though without good ground....
Some critics charged him in 1840 with “prolix
clearness.” “The old charge,”
says Mr. Gladstone upon this, was obscure compression.
I do not doubt that both may be true, and the former
may have been the result of a well-meant effort to
escape from the latter.

* * * *
*

Mr. Morley, again, selects the essay on Tennyson for
especial praise. Though one is apt to forget
it, the Laureate did not meet with anything like immediate
recognition; and, though coming twenty-eight years
after the appreciation by J.S. Mill, this article
does not assume the supremacy afterwards accorded
the poet by common consent.

SAMUEL WILBERFORCE

(1805-1873)

Page 111

“One of the most conspicuous and remarkable
figures” of his generation the versatile Bishop
of Oxford is said to have come “next to Gladstone
as a man of inexhaustible powers of work.”
Known from his Oxford days as Soapy Sam, he was involved
through no fault of his own, in some of the odium
attached to the “Essays and Reviews” and
“Colenso” cases: his private life
was embittered by the secession to Rome of his two
brothers, his brother-in-law, his only daughter, and
his son-in-law. “He was an unwearied ecclesiastical
politician, always involved in discussions and controversies,
sometimes, it was thought, in intrigues; without whom
nothing was done in convocation, nor, where Church
interests were involved, in the House of Lords.”
The energy with which he governed his diocese for
twenty-four years earned for him the title of “Romodeller
[Transcriber’s note: sic] of the Episcopate.”

* * * *
*

The attempt, by a man whose “relaxations”
were botany and ornithology, but who had no claims
to be called an expert, to defeat Darwin on his own
ground—­and the dignified horror of a Churchman
at some deductions from evolution—­is eminently
characteristic of the period.

The earnest criticism of Newman’s conversion
to Rome concerns one of the most striking events of
his generation, and illustrates the “church”
attitude on such questions.

ANONYMOUS

We have hinted already that the responsibility for
this group of ill-mannered recriminations may probably
be distributed between Gifford, Croker, and Lockhart.
It is curious to notice that the second attack on
Scott appeared after his admission to the ranks of
contributors; and the author of Waverley is
perhaps the one man said to have friends both on the
Edinburgh and the Quarterly. That
on Leigh Hunt, always the pet topic of Toryism, from
whom he certainly provoked some retaliation, is only
paralleled in Blackwood. We have included
the Shakespeare and the Moxon as attractively
brief samples on the approved model of savage banter,
and the Jane Eyre as perhaps the most flagrant
example of bad taste to be found in these merciless
pages. It was George Henry Lewis, by the way,
who so much offended Charlotte Bronte by the greeting,
“There ought to be a bond between us, for we
have both written naughty books.”

It is interesting to find Thackeray among those it
was permitted to praise: though the “moral”
objection to his “realism” reveals a strange
attitude.

We may notice, with some surprise, that the attitude
towards George Eliot is nearly as hostile as towards
Charlotte Bronte.

GIFFORD ON WEBER’S “FORD”

[From The Quarterly Review, December, 1811]

Page 112

... When it is determined to reprint the writings
of an ancient author, it is usual, we believe, to
bestow a little labour in gratifying the natural desire
of the reader to know something of his domestic circumstances.
Ford had declared in the title-pages of his several
plays, that he was of the Inner Temple; and, from his
entry there, Mr. Malone, following up the inquiry,
discovered that he was the second son of Thomas Ford,
Esq., and that he was baptized at Ilsington, in Devonshire,
the 17th of April, 1586. To this information Mr.
Weber has added nothing; and he hopes that the meagreness
of his biographical account will be readily excused
by the reader who has examined the lives of his (Ford’s)
dramatical contemporaries, in which we are continually
“led to lament that our knowledge respecting
them amounts to little better than nothing.”
It would surely be unjust to appear dissatisfied at
the imperfect account of an ancient author, when all
the sources of information have been industriously
explored. But, in the present case, we doubt
whether Mr. Weber can safely “lay this flattering
unction to his soul”; and we shall therefore
give such a sketch of the poet’s life, as an
attentive examination of his writings has enabled us
to compile....

Reversing the observation of Dryden on Shakespeare,
it may be said of Ford that “he wrote laboriously,
not luckily”: always elegant, often elevated,
never sublime, he accomplished by patient and careful
industry what Shakespeare and Fletcher produced by
the spontaneous exuberance of native genius.
He seems to have acquired early in life, and to have
retained to the last a softness of versification peculiar
to himself. Without the majestic march of verse
which distinguishes the poetry of Massinger, and with
none of that playful gaiety which characterises the
dialogue of Fletcher, he is still easy and harmonious.
There is, however, a monotony in his poetry, which
those who have perused his scenes long together must
have inevitably perceived. His dialogue is declamatory
and formal, and wants that quick chace of replication
and rejoinder so necessary to effect in representation.
If we could put out of our remembrance the singular
merits of “The Lady’s Trial,” we
should consider the genius of Ford as altogether inclined
to tragedy; and even there so large a proportion of
the pathetic pervades the drama, that it requires
the “humours” of Guzman and Fulgoso, in
addition to a happy catastrophe, to warrant the name
of comedy. In the plots of his tragedies Ford
is far from judicious; they are for the most part too
full of the horrible, and he seems to have had recourse
to an accumulation of terrific incidents, to obtain
that effect which he despairs of producing by pathos
of language. Another defect in Ford’s poetry,
proceeding from the same source, is the alloy of pedantry
which pervades his scenes, at one time exhibited in
the composition of uncouth phrases, at another in
perplexity of language; and he frequently labours

Page 113

with a remote idea, which, rather than throw it away,
he obtrudes upon his reader, involved in inextricable
obscurity. We cannot agree with the editor in
praising his delineation of the female character:
less than women in their passions, they are more than
masculine in their exploits and sufferings; but, excepting
Spinella in “The Lady’s Trial,” and
perhaps Penthea, we do not remember in Ford’s
plays, any example of that meekness and modesty which
compose the charm of the female character....

Mr. Weber is known to the admirers of our antient
literature by two publications which, although they
may not be deemed of great importance in themselves,
have yet a fair claim to notice. We speak of the
battle of Flodden Field, and the Romances of the fourteenth
century: which, as far as we have looked into
them, appear very creditable to his industry and accuracy:
his good genius, we sincerely regret to say, appears
in a great measure to have forsaken him from the moment
that he entered upon the task of editing a dramatic
poet.

In the mechanical construction of his work Mr. Weber
has followed the last edition of Massinger, with a
servility which appears, in his mind, to have obviated
all necessity of acknowledging the obligation:
we will not stop to enquire whether he might not have
found a better model; but proceed to the body of the
work. As we feel a warm interest in everything
which regards our ancient literature, on the sober
cultivation of which the purity, copiousness, and even
harmony of the English language must, in no small
degree, depend, we shall notice some of the peculiarities
of the volumes before us, in the earnest hope that
while we relieve Ford from a few of the errors and
misrepresentations with which he is here encumbered,
we may convince Mr. Weber that something more is necessary
to a faithful editor than the copying of printers’
blunders, and to a judicious commentator, than a blind
confidence in the notes of every collection of old
plays.

Mr. Weber’s attempts at explanation (for explanations
it seems, there must be) are sometimes sufficiently
humble. “Carriage,” he tells us, “is
behaviour.” It is so; we remember it in
our spelling-book, among the words of three syllables,
we have therefore no doubt of it. But you must
have, rejoins the editor; and accordingly, in every
third or fourth page, he persists in affirming that
“carriage is behaviour.” In the same
strain of thankless kindness, he assures us that “fond
is foolish,” “but, except,” “content,
contentment,” and vice versa, “period
[Transcriber’s note: ‘peroid’
in original], end,” “demur, delay,”
“ever, always,” “sudden, quickly,”
“quick, suddenly,” and so on through a
long vocabulary of words of which a girl of six years
old would blush to ask the meaning....

Page 114

The confidence which Mr. Weber reposes in Steevens,
not only on one but on every occasion, is quite exemplary:
the name alone operates as a charm, and supersedes
all necessity of examining into the truth of his assertions;
and he gently reminds those who occasionally venture
to question it, that “they are ignorant and
superficial critics.” Vol. ii, p. 256.—­“I
have seen Summer go up and down with hot codlings!
Mr. Steevens observes that a codling antiently
meant an immature apple, and the present passage plainly
proves it, as none but immature apples could be had
in summer,” all this wisdom is thrown away.
We can assure Mr. Weber, on the authority of Ford
himself, that “hot codlings” are not
apples, either mature or immature. Steevens is
a dangerous guide for such as do not look well about
them. His errors are specious: for he was
a man of ingenuity: but he was often wantonly
mischievous, and delighted to stumble for the mere
gratification of dragging unsuspecting innocents into
the mire with him. He was, in short, the very
Puck of commentators....

No writer, in our remembrance, meets with so many
“singular words” as the present editor.
He conjectures, however, that unvamp’d
means disclosed. It means not stale, not
patched up. We should have supposed it impossible
to miss the sense of so trite an expression....
Mr. Weber’s acquaintance with our dramatic writers
extends, as the reader must have observed, very little
beyond the indexes of Steevens and Reed. If he
cannot find the word of which he is in quest, in them,
he sets it down as an uncommon expression, or a coinage
of his author....

These inadvertences, and many others which might be
noticed, being chiefly confined to the notes, do not,
perhaps, detract much from the value of the text:
we now turn to some of a different kind, which bear
hard on the editor, and prove that his want of knowledge
is not compensated by any extraordinary degree of
attention. It is not sufficient for Mr. Weber
to say that many of the errors which we shall point
out are found in the old copy. It was his duty
to reform them. A facsimile of blunders no one
requires. Modern editions of our old poets are
purchased upon the faith of a corrected text:
this is their only claim to notice; and, if defective
here, they become at once little better than waste-paper....

There is something extremely capricious in Mr. Weber’s
mode of proceeding: words are tampered with which
are necessary to the right understanding of the text,
while others, which reduce it to absolute jargon,
are left unmolested....

We might carry this part of our examination to an
immense extent; but we forbear. Enough, and more
than enough, is done to show that a strict revision
of the text is indispensible; and, if it should fall
to the lot of the present editor to undertake it,
we trust that he will evince somewhat more care than
he manifests in the conclusion of the work before
us. It will scarcely be credited that Mr. Weber
should travel through such a volume as we have just
passed, in quest of errata, and find only one.
“Vol. ii (he says), p. 321, line 12, for satiromastrix
read satiromastix!”

Page 115

We could be well content to rest here; but we have
a more serious charge to bring against the editor,
than the omission of points, or the misapprehension
of words. He has polluted his pages with the blasphemies
of a poor maniac, who, it seems, once published some
detached scenes of the “Broken Heart.”
For this unfortunate creature, every feeling mind
will find an apology in his calamitous situation; but—­for
Mr. Weber, we know not where the warmest of his friends
will seek either palliation or excuse.

ON KEATS

[From The Quarterly Review, April, 1818]

Reviewers have sometimes been accused of not reading
the works which they affected to criticise. On
the present occasion we shall anticipate the author’s
complaint, and honestly confess that we have not read
his work. Not that we have been wanting in our
duty—­far from it—­indeed, we
have made efforts almost as superhuman as the story
itself appears to be, to get through it; but with
the fullest stretch of our perseverence, we are forced
to confess that we have not been able to struggle beyond
the first of the four books[1] of which this Poetic
Romance consists. We should extremely lament
this want of energy, or whatever it may be, on our
parts, were it not for one consolation—­namely,
that we are no better acquainted with the meaning
of that book through which we have so painfully toiled
than we are with that of the three which we have not
looked into.

[1] Endymion: A Poetic Romance. By
John Keats. London, 1818.

It is not that Mr. Keats (if that be his real name,
for we almost doubt that any man in his senses would
put his real name to such a rhapsody) it is not, we
say, that the author has not powers of language, rays
of fancy, and gleams of genius—­he has all
these; but he is unhappily a disciple of the new school
of what has been somewhere called Cockney poetry;
which may be defined to consist of the most incongruous
ideas in the most uncouth language.

Of this school Mr. Leigh Hunt, as we observed in a
former number, aspires to be the hierophant.
Our readers will recollect the pleasant recipes for
harmonious and sublime poetry which he gave us in his
preface to Rimini, and the still more facetious
instances of his harmony and sublimity in the verses
themselves; and they will recollect above all the
contempt of Pope, Johnson, and such like poetasters
and pseudo-critics, which so forcibly contrasted itself
with Mr. Leigh Hunt’s approbation of

—­All
the things itself had wrote,
Of special merit though of little note.

The author is a copyist of Mr. Hunt, but he is more
unintelligible, almost as rugged, twice as diffuse,
and ten times more tiresome and absurd than his prototype,
who, though he impudently presumed to seat himself
in the chair of criticism, and to measure his own poetry
by his own standard, yet generally had a meaning.
But Mr. Keats had advanced no dogmas which he was
bound to support by examples, his nonsense therefore
is quite gratuitous; he writes it for its own sake,
and being bitten by Mr. Leigh Hunt’s insane
criticism, more than rivals the insanity of his poetry.

Page 116

Mr. Keats’s preface hints that his poem was
produced under peculiar circumstances....

The two first books, and indeed the two
last, are not of such
completion as to warrant their passing
the press. p. vii.

Thus, “the two first books” are, even
in his own judgment, unfit to appear, and “the
two last” are, it seems, in the same condition—­and
as two and two make four, and as that is the whole
number of books, we have a clear and, we believe,
a very just estimate of the entire work.

Mr. Keats, however, deprecates criticism on this “immature
and feverish” work in terms which are themselves
sufficiently feverish; and we confess that we should
have abstained from inflicting upon him any of the
tortures of the “fierce hell” of
criticism, which terrify his imagination, if he had
not begged to be spared in order that he might write
more; if we had not observed in him a certain degree
of talent which deserves to be put in the right way,
or which, at least, ought to be warned of the wrong;
and if, finally, he had not told us that he is of
an age and temper which imperiously require mental
discipline.

Of the story we have been able to make out but little;
it seems to be mythological, and probably relates
to the loves of Diana and Endymion; but of this, as
the scope of the work has altogether escaped us, we
cannot speak with any degree of certainty: and
must therefore content ourselves with giving some
instances of its diction and versification.—­
And here again we are perplexed and puzzled.—­At
first it appeared to us, that Mr. Keats had been amusing
himself and wearying his readers with an immeasurable
game at bouts rimes; but, if we recollect rightly,
it is an indispensable condition at this play, that
the rhymes when filled up shall have a meaning; and
our author, as we have already hinted, has no meaning.
He seems to us to write a line at random, and then
he follows not the thought excited by this line, but
that suggested by the rhyme with which it concludes.
There is hardly a complete couplet inclosing a complete
idea in the whole book. He wanders from one subject
to another, from the association, not of ideas, but
of sounds, and the work is composed of hemistichs
which, it is quite evident, have forced themselves
upon the author by the mere force of the catchwords
on which they turn....

Be still the unimaginable lodge
For solitary thinkings; such as dodge
Conception to the very bourne of heaven,
Then leave the naked brain: be still
the leaven,
That spreading in this dull and clodded
earth
Gives it a touch ethereal—­a
new birth. p. 17.

Lodge, dodge—­heaven, leaven—­earth,
birth; such, in six words, is the sum and substance
of six lines.

We come now to the author’s taste in versification.
He cannot indeed write a sentence, but perhaps he
may be able to spin a line. Let us see.
The following are specimens of his prosodial notions
of our English heroic metre.

Page 117

Dear as the temple’s self, so does
the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite, p.
4.

So plenteously all weed-hidden roots,
p. 6.

... By this time our readers must be pretty well
satisfied as to the meaning of his sentences and the
structures of his lines: we now present them
with some of the new words with which, in imitation
of Mr. Leigh Hunt, he adorns our language.

We are told that “turtles passion their
voices” (p. 15); that “an arbour was nested”
(p. 23); and a lady’s locks “gordian’d”
up (p. 32); and to supply the place of nouns thus
verbalised Mr. Keats, with great fecundity, spawns
new ones; such as “men-slugs and human serpentry”
(p. 14); “honey-feel of bliss” (p.
45); “wives prepare needments”
(p. 13)—­and so forth.

Then he has formed new verbs by the process of cutting
off their tails, the adverbs, and affixing them to
their foreheads; thus “the wine out-sparkled”
(p. 10); the “multitude up-follow’d”
(p. 11); and “night up-took” (p. 29).
“The wind up-blows” (p. 32); and the “hours
are down-sunken” (p. 36).

But if he sinks some adverbs in the verbs he compensates
the language with adverbs and adjectives which he
separates from the parent stock. Thus, a lady
“whispers pantingly and close,”
makes “hushing signs,” and steers
her skiff into a “ripply cove” (p.
23); a shower falls “refreshfully”
(p. 45); and a vulture has a “spreaded
tail” (p. 44).

But enough of Mr. Leigh Hunt and his simple neophite.—­If
anyone should be bold enough to purchase this “Poetic
Romance,” and so much more patient than ourselves,
as to get beyond the first book, and so much more
fortunate as to find a meaning, we entreat him to make
us acquainted with his success; we shall then return
to the task which we now abandon in despair, and endeavour
to make all due amends to Mr. Keats and to our readers.

CROKER ON SYDNEY SMITH

[From The Quarterly Review, February, 1810]

This sermon[1] is written on the characters and duties
of the clergy. Perhaps it would have produced
more effect upon the Yorkshire divines had it come
from one who had lived longer among them, and of the
correspondence of whose life with his doctrines, they
had better opportunities of judging; one whom, from
long experience, they knew to be neither sullied by
the little “affectations,” nor “agitated
by the little vanities of the world,” whose
strict observance of “those decencies and proprieties,”
which persons in their profession “owe to their
situation in society,” they had remarked through
a long course of years. Whether the life of Mr.
Smith would form an illustration of his own precepts
remains to be proved. But, if we rightly recollect
dates, he is still to his neighbours a sort of unknown
person, and hardly yet tried in his new situation
of a parish priest. We therefore think, in spite
of all the apologies with which he has prefaced his
advice, that a more judicious topic might easily have
been selected.

Page 118

[1] A sermon preached before His Grace the Archbishop
of York, and the
clergy, at Malton, at the
Visitation, Aug., 1809. By the Rev. Sydney
Smith, A.M., Rector of Foston,
in Yorkshire, and late Fellow of New
College, Oxford. Carpenter,
1809.

In the execution of this sermon there is little to
commend. As a system of duties for any body of
clergy, it is wretchedly deficient:—­and
really, when we call to mind the rich, the full, the
vigorous, eloquent, and impassioned manner in which
these duties are recommended and inforced in the writings
of our old divines, we are mortified beyond measure
at the absolute poverty, crudeness, and meanness of
the present attempt to mimic them. As a composition,
it is very imperfect: it has nearly the same
merits, and rather more than the same defects, which
characterise his former publications. Mr. Smith
never writes but in a loose declamatory way.
He is careless of connection, and not very anxious
about argument. His sole object is to produce
an effect at the moment, a strong first impression
upon an audience, and if that can be done he is very
indifferent as to what may be the result of examination
and reflection....

If Mr. Smith is not only not a Socinian, but if in
his heart he doubts as to the least important point
of the most abstruce and controverted subject on which
our articles have decided, if, in short, he is not
one of the most rigorously orthodox divines that exists,
he has been guilty of the grossest and most disgusting
hypocrisy—­he has pronounced in the face
of the public to which he appeals, and of the church
to which he belongs, in the most solemn manner, and
on the most solemn subject, a direct, intentional,
and scandalous falsehood—­he has acted in
a way utterly subversive of all confidence among men;
and the greater part of the wretches who retire from
a course of justice degraded for perjury rank higher
in the scale of morality, than an educated man holding
a respectable place in society, who could thus trifle
with the most sacred obligations. He could be
induced to this base action only by a base motive,
that of obviating any difficulties which a suspicion
of his holding opinions different from those avowed
by the establishment, might throw in the way of his
preferment: and of rendering himself a possible
object of the bounty of “his worthy masters and
mistresses,” whenever the golden days arrive,
in which they shall again dispense the favours of
the crown. Such must be the case, if Mr. Smith
is not sincere. There is no alternative.
Now this is scarcely to be believed of any gentleman
of tolerably fair character, still less of a teacher
of morality and religion, who holds forth in all his
writings the most refined sentiments of honour and
disinterestedness.

The style of his profession of faith, however, partakes
very much of the most offensive peculiarities of his
manner. It is abrupt and violent to a degree
which not only shocks good taste, but detracts considerably
from the appearance of sincerity. It seems as
if he considered his creed as a sort of nauseous medicine
which could only be taken off at a draught, and he
looks round for applause at the heroic effort by which
he has drained the cup to its very dregs.

Page 119

But the passage about the verse in St. John is yet
more extraordinary. Has Mr. Smith really gone
through the controversy upon this subject? And
even if he has, is this the light way in which a man
wholly unknown in the learned world, is entitled to
contradict the opinion of some of the greatest scholars
of Europe? We have, however, the mere word of
the facetious rector of Foston, opposite to the authority
and the arguments of a Porson and a Griesbach.
It is at his command, unsupported by the smallest
attempt at reasoning, that we are to set aside the
opinion of men whose lives have been spent in the
study of the Greek language, and of biblical criticism,
and which has been acquiesced in by many of the most
competent judges both here and abroad. Such audacity
(to call it by no coarser name) is in itself only
calculated to excite laughter and contempt: coupled
as it is with a most unprovoked and unwarrantable
mention of the name of the Bishop of Lincoln, it excites
indignation. We feel no morbid sensibility for
the character of a mitred divine: but we cannot
see a blow aimed at the head of one of the chiefs of
the church, a pious, learned, and laborious man, by
the hand of ignorance and presumption, without interposing,
not to heal the wound, for no wound has been made,
but to chastise the assailant. The Bishop of Lincoln
gives up these verses, not carelessly, and unadvisedly,
but doubtless because he is persuaded that the cause
of true Religion can never be so much injured as by
resting its defence upon passages liable to so much
suspicion; and because he knows, that the doctrine
of the Trinity by no means depends upon that particular
passage, but may be satisfactorily deduced from various
other expressions, and from the general tenor of holy
writ. Indeed, if we were not prevented from harbouring
any such suspicion by Mr. Smith’s flaming profession
of the iotal accuracy of his creed; and if
we could doubt the orthodoxy of the divine, without
impugning the honesty of the man, we should be inclined
to suspect that his defence of the verses proceeded
from a concealed enemy. We are not unaware that
the question cannot even yet be regarded as finally
and incontrovertibly settled, but we apprehend the
truth to be that Mr. Smith, not having read one syllable
upon the subject, but having accidentally heard that
there was a disputed verse in St. John relative to
the doctrine of the Trinity, and that it had been given
up by the Bishop of Lincoln, thought he could not
do better than by one dash of the pen, to show his
knowledge of controversy, and the orthodoxy of his
belief, at the expense of that prelate’s character
for discretion and zeal....

Page 120

The next note is mere political, an ebullition of
party rage, in which Mr. Smith abuses the present
ministry with great bitterness, talks of “wickedness,”
“weakness,” “ignorance,” “temerity,”
after the usual fashion of opposition pamphlets, and
clamours loudly against what, with an obstinacy of
misrepresentation hardly to be credited, he persists
in terming the “persecuting laws” against
the Roman Catholics.... He is very anxious that
his political friends should not desist from urging
the question—­an act of tergiversation and
unconsistency which, he thinks, would ruin them in
the estimation of the public. Yet, if we mistake
not, these gentlemen, at least that portion of them
with which Mr. Smith (as we are told) is most closely
connected, gave up, without a blush, India, Reform,
and Peace, all of which they taught us to believe
were vital questions in which the honour or the security
of the country was involved. But Catholic emancipation
has some peculiar recommendations. It is odious
to the people, and painful to the King, and therefore
it cannot be delayed, without an utter sacrifice of
character....

Now we are by no means so eager on Mr. Smith in what
he would term the cause of religious freedom.
We belong to that vulgar school of timid churchmen,
to whom the elevation of a vast body of sectaries to
a level with the establishment, is a matter of very
grave consideration, if not of alarm. We think
that something is due to the prejudices (supposing
them to be no more than prejudices) of nine-tenths
of the people of England; and we are even so childish
(for which we crave Mr. Smith’s pardon) as to
pay some regard to the feelings of the King, in whose
personal mortification, we fairly own, we should not
take the smallest pleasure....

We now take leave of the sermon and its notes.
But, before we conclude, we are desirous ... to convey
to Mr. Smith a little salutary advice ... to remind
him that unmeasured severity of invective against others,
will naturally produce, at the first favourable opportunity,
a retort of similar harshness upon himself; and that
unless he feels himself completely invulnerable, the
conduct which he has hitherto pursued, is not only
uncharitable and violent, but foolish. He should
be told that, although he possesses some talents,
they are by no means, as he supposes, of the first
order. He writes in a tone of superiority which
would hardly be justifiable at the close of a long
and successful literary career. His acquirements
are very moderate, though he wants neither boldness
nor dexterity in displaying them to the best advantage;
and he is far, very far indeed, from being endowed
with that powerful, disciplined, and comprehensive
mind, which should entitle him to decide authoritatively
and at once upon the most difficult parts of subjects
so far removed from one another as biblical criticism
and legislation. His style is rapid and lively,
but hasty and inaccurate; and he either despises or
is incapable of regular and finished composition.

Page 121

Humour, indeed (we speak now generally, of all these
performances which have been ascribed to him by common
consent), is his strong point; and here he is often
successful; but even from this praise many deductions
must be made. His jokes are broad and coarse;
he is altogether a mannerist, and never knows where
to stop. The [Greek: Paedenagan]
seems quite unknown to him. His pleasantry does
not proceed from keen and well-supported irony; just,
but unexpected comparisons; but depends, for effect,
chiefly upon strange polysyllabic epithets, and the
endless enumeration of minute circumstances.
In this he, no doubt, displays considerable ingenuity,
and a strong sense of what is ludicrous; but his good
things are almost all prepared after one receipt.
There is some talent, but more trick, in their composition.
The thing is well done, but it is of a low order;
we meet with nothing graceful, nothing exquisite,
nothing that pleases upon repetition and reflection.
In everything that Mr. Smith attempts, in all his
“bravura” passages, serious or comic,
one is always shocked by some affectation or absurdity;
something in direct defiance of all those principles
which have been established by the authority of the
best critics, and the example of the best writers:
indeed, bad taste seems to be Mr. Smith’s evil
genius, both as to sentiment and expression. It
is always hovering near him, and, like one of the
harpies, is sure to pounce down before the end of
the feast, and spoil the banquet, and disgust the guests.

The present publication is by far the worst of all
his performances, avowed or imputed. Literary
merit it has none; but in arrogance, presumption,
and absurdity, it far outdoes all his former outdoings.
Indeed, we regard it as one of the most deplorable
mistakes that has ever been committed by a man of
supposed talents....

ON MACAULAY

[From The Quarterly Review, March, 1849]

The History of England from the Accession of James
II. By THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 2 vols.
8vo. 1849.

The reading world will not need our testimony, though
we willingly give it, that Mr. Macaulay possesses
great talents and extraordinary acquirements.
He unites powers and has achieved successes, not only
various, but different in their character, and seldom
indeed conjoined in one individual. He was while
in Parliament, though not quite an orator, and still
less a debater, the most brilliant rhetorician of the
House. His Roman ballads (as we said in an article
on their first appearance) exhibit a novel idea worked
out with a rare felicity, so as to combine the spirit
of the ancient minstrels with the regularity of construction
and sweetness of versification which modern taste requires;
and his critical Essays exhibit a wide variety of knowledge
with a great fertility of illustration, and enough
of the salt of pleasantry and sarcasm to flavour and

Page 122

in some degree disguise a somewhat declamatory and
pretentious dogmatism. It may seem too epigrammatic,
but it is, in our serious judgment, strictly true,
to say that his History seems to be a kind of combination
and exaggeration of the peculiarities of all his former
efforts. It is as full of political prejudice
and partisan advocacy as any of his parliamentary
speeches. It makes the facts of English History
as fabulous as his Lays do those of Roman tradition;
and it is written with as captious, as dogmatical,
and as cynical a spirit as the bitterest of his Reviews.
That upon so serious an undertaking he has lavished
uncommon exertion, is not to be doubted; nor can any
one during the first reading escape the entrainement
of his picturesque, vivid, and pregnant execution:
but we have fairly stated the impression left on ourselves
by a more calm and leisurely perusal. We have
been so long the opponents of the political party
to which Mr. Macaulay belongs that we welcomed the
prospect of again meeting him on the neutral ground
of literature. We are of that class of Tories—­Protestant
Tories, as they were called—­that have no
sympathy with the Jacobites. We are as strongly
convinced as Mr. Macaulay can be of the necessity of
the Revolution of 1688—­of the general prudence
and expediency of the steps taken by our Whig and
Tory ancestors of the Convention Parliament, and of
the happiness, for a century and a half, of the constitutional
results. We were, therefore, not without hope
that at least in these two volumes, almost entirely
occupied with the progress and accomplishment of that
Revolution, we might without any sacrifice of our political
feelings enjoy unalloyed the pleasures reasonably to
be expected from Mr. Macaulay’s high powers
both of research and illustration. That hope
has been deceived: Mr. Macaulay’s historical
narrative is poisoned with a rancour more violent
than even the passions of the time; and the literary
qualities of the work, though in some respects very
remarkable, are far from redeeming its substantial
defects. There is hardly a page—­ we
speak literally, hardly a page—­that does
not contain something objectionable either in substance
or in colour: and the whole of the brilliant
and at first captivating narrative is perceived on
examination to be impregnated to a really marvellous
degree with bad taste, bad feeling, and, we are under
the painful necessity of adding—­bad faith.

These are grave charges: but we make them in
sincerity, and we think that we shall be able to prove
them; and if, here or hereafter, we should seem to
our readers to use harsher terms than good taste might
approve, we beg in excuse to plead that it is impossible
to fix one’s attention on, and to transcribe
large portions of a work, without being in some degree
infected with its spirit; and Mr. Macaulay’s
pages, whatever may be their other characteristics,
are as copious a repertorium of vituperative eloquence
as, we believe, our language can produce, and especially
against everything in which he chooses (whether right
or wrong) to recognise the shibboleth of Toryism.
We shall endeavour, however, in the expression of
our opinions, to remember the respect we owe to our
readers and to Mr. Macaulay’s general character
and standing in the world of letters, rather than the
provocations and examples of the volumes immediately
before us.

Page 123

Mr. Macaulay announces his intention of bringing down
the history of England almost to our own times; but
these two volumes are complete in themselves, and
we may fairly consider them as a history of the Revolution;
and in that light the first question that presents
itself to us is why Mr. Macaulay has been induced
to re-write what had already been so often and even
so recently written—­among others, by Dalrymple,
a strenuous but honest Whig, and by Mr. Macaulay’s
own oracles, Fox and Mackintosh? It may be answered
that both Fox and Mackintosh left their works imperfect.
Fox got no farther than Monmouth’s death; but
Mackintosh came down to the Orange invasion, and covered
full nine-tenths of the period as yet occupied by
Mr. Macaulay. Why then did Mr. Macaulay not content
himself with beginning where Mackintosh left off—­
that is, with the Revolution? and it would have been
the more natural, because, as our readers know, it
is there that Hume’s history terminates.

What reason does he give for this work of supererogation?
None. He does not (as we shall see more fully
by and by) take the slightest notice of Mackintosh’s
history, no more than if it had never existed.
Has he produced a new fact? Not one. Has
he discovered any new materials? None, as far
as we can judge, but the collections of Fox and Mackintosh,
confided to him by their families.[1] It seems to us
a novelty in literary practice that a writer raised
far by fame and fortune above the vulgar temptations
of the craft should undertake to tell a story already
frequently and recently told by masters of the highest
authority and most extensive information, without
having, or even professing to have, any additional
means or special motive to account for the attempt.

[1] It appears from two notes of acknowledgments to
M. Guizot and the
keepers of the archives at
The Hague, that Mr. Macaulay obtained
some additions to the copies
which Mackintosh already had of the
letters of Ronquillo the Spanish
and Citters the Dutch minister at
the court of James. We
may conjecture that these additions were
insignificant, since Mr. Macaulay
has nowhere, that we have
observed, specially noticed
them; but except these, whatever they
may be, we find no trace of
anything that Fox and Mackintosh had not
already examined and classed.

We suspect, however, that we can trace Mr. Macaulay’s
design to its true source—­the example and
success of the author of Waverley. The historical
novel, if not invented, at least first developed and
illustrated by the happy genius of Scott, took a sudden
and extensive hold of the public taste; he himself,
in most of his subsequent novels, availed himself
largely of the historical element which had contributed
so much to the popularity of Waverley. The press
has since that time groaned with his imitators.
We have had historical novels of all classes and grades.
We have had served up in this form the Norman Conquest
and the Wars of the Roses, the Gunpowder Plot and
the Fire of London, Darnley and Richelieu—­and
almost at the same moment with Mr. Macaulay’s
appeared a professed romance of Mr. Ainsworth’s
on the same subject—­ James II. Nay,
on a novelist of this popular order has been conferred
the office of Historiographer to the Queen.

Page 124

Mr. Macaulay, too mature not to have well measured
his own peculiar capacities, not rich in invention
but ingenious in application, saw the use that might
be made of this principle, and that history itself
would be much more popular with a large embroidery
of personal, social, and even topographical anecdote
and illustration, instead of the sober garb in which
we had been in the habit of seeing it. Few histories
indeed ever were or could be written without some
admixture of this sort. The father of the art
himself, old Herodotus, vivified his text with a greater
share of what we may call personal anecdote than any
of his classical followers. Modern historians,
as they happened to have more or less of what we may
call artistic feeling, admitted more or less
of this decoration into their text, but always with
an eye (which Mr. Macaulay never exercises) to the
appropriateness and value of the illustration.
Generally, however, such matters have been thrown into
notes, or, in a few instances—­as by Dr.
Henry and in Mr. Knight’s interesting and instructive
“Pictorial History”—­into separate
chapters. The large class of memoir-writers may
also be fairly considered as anecdotical historians—­and
they are in fact the sources from which the novelists
of the new school extract their principal characters
and main incidents.

Mr. Macaulay deals with history, evidently, as we
think, in imitation of the novelists—­his
first object being always picturesque effect—­his
constant endeavour to give from all the repositories
of gossip that have reached us a kind of circumstantial
reality to his incidents, and a sort of dramatic life
to his personages. For this purpose he would not
be very solicitous about contributing any substantial
addition to history, strictly so called; on the contrary,
indeed, he seems to have willingly taken it as he
found it, adding to it such lace and trimmings as he
could collect from the Monmouth-street of literature,
seldom it may be safely presumed of very delicate
quality. It is, as Johnson drolly said, “an
old coat with a new facing—­the old dog in
a new doublet.” The conception was bold,
and—­so far as availing himself, like other
novelists, of the fashion of the day to produce a popular
and profitable effect—­the experiment has
been eminently successful.

But besides the obvious incentives just noticed, Mr.
Macaulay had also the stimulus of what we may compendiously
call a strong party spirit. One would have thought
that the Whigs might have been satisfied with their
share in the historical library of the Revolution:—­besides
Rapin, Echard, and Jones, who, though of moderate
politics in general, were stout friends to the Revolution,
they have had of professed and zealous Whigs, Burnet,
the foundation of all, Kennett, Oldmixon, Dalrymple,
Laing, Brodie, Fox, and finally Mackintosh and his
continuator, besides innumerable writers of less note,
who naturally adopted the successful side; and we
should not have supposed that the reader of any of

Page 125

those historians, and particularly the later ones,
could complain that they had been too sparing of imputation,
or even vituperation, to the opposite party.
But not so Mr. Macaulay. The most distinctive
feature on the face of his pages is personal virulence—­if
he has at all succeeded in throwing an air of fresh
life into his characters, it is mainly due, as any
impartial and collected reader will soon discover,
to the simple circumstance of his hating the individuals
of the opposite party as bitterly, as passionately,
as if they were his own personal enemies—­
more so, indeed, we hope than he would a mere political
antagonist of his own day. When some one suggested
to the angry O’Neil that one of the Anglo-Irish
families whom he was reviling as strangers had been
four hundred years settled in Ireland, the Milesian
replied, “I hate the churls as if they had
come but yesterday.” Mr. Macaulay seems
largely endowed with this (as with a more enviable)
species of memory, and he hates, for example, King
Charles I as if he had been murdered only yesterday.
Let us not be understood as wishing to abridge an historian’s
full liberty of censure—­but he should not
be a satirist, still less a libeller. We do not
say nor think that Mr. Macaulay’s censures were
always unmerited—­far from it—­but
they are always, we think without exception, immoderate.
Nay, it would scarcely be too much to say that this
massacre of character is the point on which Mr. Macaulay
must chiefly rest any claims he can advance to the
praise of impartiality, for while he paints everything
that looks like a Tory in the blackest colours, he
does not altogether spare any of the Whigs against
whom he takes a spite, though he always visits them
with a gentler correction. In fact, except Oliver
Cromwell, King William, a few gentlemen who had the
misfortune to be executed or exiled for high treason,
and every dissenting minister that he has or can find
occasion to notice, there are hardly any persons mentioned
who are not stigmatized as knaves or fools, differing
only in degrees of “turpitude” and “imbecility”.
Mr. Macaulay has almost realized the work that Alexander
Chalmers’s playful imagination had fancied,
a Biographia Flagitiosa, or The Lives of
Eminent Scoundrels. This is also an imitation
of the Historical Novel, though rather in the track
of Eugene Aram and Jack Sheppard than of Waverley
or Woodstock; but what would you have? To attain
the picturesque—­the chief object of our
artist—­he adopts the ready process of dark
colours and a rough brush. Nature, even at the
worst, is never gloomy enough for a Spagnoletto, and
Judge Jeffries himself, for the first time, excites
a kind of pity when we find him (like one to whom he
was nearly akin) not so black as he is painted.

From this first general view of Mr. Macaulay’s
Historical Novel, we now proceed to exhibit in detail
some grounds for the opinion which we have ventured
to express.

Page 126

We premise that we are about to enter into details,
because there is in fact little to question or debate
about but details. We have already hinted that
there is absolutely no new fact of any consequence,
and, we think we can safely add, hardly a new view
of any historical fact, in the whole book. Whatever
there may remain questionable or debatable in the
history of the period, we should have to argue with
Burnet, Dalrymple, or Mackintosh, and not with Mr.
Macaulay. It would, we know, have a grander air
if we were to make his book the occasion of disquisitions
on the rise and progress of the constitution—­on
the causes by which the monarchy of the Tudors passed,
through the murder of Charles, to the despotism of
Cromwell—­how again that produced a restoration
which settled none of the great moral or political
questions which had generated all those agitations,
and which, in return, those agitations had complicated
and inflamed—­and how, at last, the undefined,
discordant, and antagonistic pretensions of the royal
and democratical elements were reconciled by the Revolution
and the Bill of Rights—­and finally, whether
with too much or too little violence to the principles
of the ancient constitution—­all these topics,
we say, would, if we were so inclined, supply us,
as they have supplied Mr. Macaulay, with abundant
opportunities of grave tautology and commonplace; but
we decline to raise sham debates on points where there
is no contest. We can have little historic difference,
properly so called, with one who has no historical
difference on the main facts with anybody else:
instead, then, of pretending to treat any great questions,
either of constitutional learning or political philosophy,
we shall confine ourselves to the humbler but more
practical and more useful task above stated.

Our first complaint is of a comparatively small and
almost mechanical, and yet very real, defect—­the
paucity and irregularity of his dates, and the mode
in which the few that he does give are overlaid, as
it were, by the text. This, though it may be
very convenient to the writer, and quite indifferent
to the reader, of an historical romance, is perplexing
to any one who might wish to read and weigh the book
as a serious history, of which dates are the guides
and landmarks; and when they are visibly neglected
we cannot but suspect that the historian will be found
not very solicitous about strict accuracy. This
negligence is carried to such an extent that, in what
looks like a very copious table of contents, one of
the most important events of the whole history—­
that, indeed, on which the Revolution finally turned—­the
marriage of Princess Mary to the Prince of Orange,
is not noticed; nor is any date affixed to the very
cursory mention of it in the text. It is rather
hard to force the reader who buys this last new model
history, in general so profuse of details, to recur
to one of the old-fashioned ones to discover that
this important event happened in the year 1675, and
on the 4th of November—­a day thrice over
remarkable in William’s history—­for
his birth, his marriage, and his arrival with his invading
army on the coast of Devon.

Page 127

Our second complaint is of one of the least important,
perhaps, but most prominent defects of Mr. Macaulay’s
book—­his Style—­not merely the
choice and order of words, commonly called style, but
the turn of mind which prompts the choice of expressions
as well as of topics. We need not repeat that
Mr. Macaulay has a great facility of language, a prodigal
copia verborum—­that he narrates rapidly
and clearly—­that he paints very forcibly,—­and
that his readers throughout the tale are carried on,
or away, by something of the sorcery which a brilliant
orator exercises over his auditory. But he has
also in a great degree the faults of the oratorical
style. He deals much too largely in epithets—­a
habit exceedingly dangerous to historical truth.
He habitually constructs a piece of what should be
calm, dispassionate narrative, upon the model of the
most passionate peroration—­adhering in
numberless instances to precisely the same specific
formula of artifice. His diction is often inflated
into fustian, and he indulges in exaggeration till
it sometimes, unconsciously no doubt, amounts to falsehood.
It is a common fault of those who strive at producing
oratorical effects, to oscillate between commonplace
and extravagance; and while studying Mr. Macaulay,
one feels as if vibrating between facts that every
one knows and consequences which nobody can believe.
We are satisfied that whoever will take, as we have
been obliged to do, the pains of sifting what Mr.
Macaulay has produced from his own mind with what
he has borrowed from others, will be entirely of our
opinion. In truth, when, after reading a page
or two of this book, we have occasion to turn to the
same transaction in Burnet, Dalrymple, or Hume, we
feel as if we were exchanging the glittering agility
of a rope-dancer for gentlemen in the attire and attitude
of society. And we must say that there is not
one of those writers that does not give a clearer and
more trustworthy account of all that is really historical
in the period than can be collected from Mr. Macaulay’s
more decorated pages. We invite our readers to
try Mr. Macaulay’s merits as an historian by
the test of comparison with his predecessors.

* * * *
*

Every great painter is supposed to make a larger use
of one particular colour. What a monstrous bladderful
of infamy Mr. Macaulay must have squeezed on
his palette when he took to portrait-painting!
We have no concern, except as friends to historical
justice, for the characters of any of the parties
thus stigmatized, nor have we room or time to discuss
these, or the hundred other somewhat similar cases
which the volumes present; but we have looked at the
authorities cited by Mr. Macaulay, and we do not hesitate
to say that, “as is his wont,” he has,
with the exception of Jeffries, outrageously exaggerated
them.

Page 128

We must next notice the way in which Mr. Macaulay
refers to and uses his authorities—­no trivial
points in the execution of a historical work—­
though we shall begin with comparatively small matters.
In his chapter on manners, which we may call the most
remarkable in his book, one of his most frequent references
is to “Chamberlayne’s State of England,
1684.” It is referred to at least a dozen
or fourteen times in that chapter alone; but we really
have some doubt whether Mr. Macaulay knew the nature
of the book he so frequently quoted. Chamberlayne’s
work, of which the real title is “Angliae
[or, after the Scotch Union, Magnae Britanniae]
Notitia, or the Present State of England”
[or Great Britain], was a kind of periodical
publication, half history and half court-calendar.
It was first published in 1669, and new editions or
reprints, with new dates, were issued, not annually,
we believe, but so frequently that there are between
thirty and forty of them in the Museum, ending with
1755. From the way and for the purposes for which
Mr. Macaulay quotes Chamberlayne, we should almost
suspect that he had lighted on the volume for 1684,
and, knowing of no other, considered it as a substantive
work published in that year. Once indeed he
cites the date of 1686, but there was, it seems, no
edition of that year, and this may be an accidental
error; but however that may be, our readers will smile
when they hear that the two first and several following
passages which Mr. Macaulay cites from Chamberlayne
(i. 290 and 291), as characteristic of the
days of Charles II, distinctively from more
modern times, are to be found literatim in every
succeeding “Chamberlayne” down to 1755—­the
last we have seen—­were thus continually
reproduced because the proprietors and editors of the
table book knew they were not particularly
characteristical of one year or reign more than another—­and
now, in 1849, might be as well quoted as characteristics
of the reign of George II as of Charles II. We
must add that there are references to Chamberlayne
and to several weightier books (some of which we shall
notice more particularly hereafter), as justifying
assertions for which, on examining the said books with
our best diligence, we have not been able to find
a shadow of authority.

Our readers know that there was a Dr. John Eachard
who wrote a celebrated work on the “Grounds
and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy.”
They also know that there was a Dr. Lawrence Echard
who wrote both a History of England, and a History
of the Revolution. Both of these were remarkable
men; but we almost doubt whether Mr. Macaulay, who
quotes the works of each, does not confound their persons,
for he refers to them both by the common (as it may
once have been) name of Eachard, and at least
twenty times by the wrong name. This, we admit,
is a small matter; but what will some Edinburgh Reviewer
(temp. Albert V) say if he finds a writer
confounding Catherine and Thomas Macaulay
as “the celebrated author of the great Whig
History of England”—­a confusion hardly
worse than that of the two Eachards—­for
Catherine, though now forgotten by an ungrateful public,
made quite as much noise in her day as Thomas does
in ours.

Page 129

But we are sorry to say we have a heavier complaint
against Mr. Macaulay. We accuse him of a habitual
and really injurious perversion of his authorities.
This unfortunate indulgence, in whatever juvenile
levity it may have originated, and through whatever
steps it may have grown into an unconscious habit,
seems to us to pervade the whole work—­
from Alpha to Omega—­from Procopius to Mackintosh—­and
it is on that very account the more difficult to bring
to the distinct conception of our readers. Individual
instances can be, and shall be, produced; but how
can we extract and exhibit the minute particles that
colour every thread of the texture?—­how
extract the impalpable atoms that have fermented the
whole brewing? We must do as Dr. Faraday does
at the Institution when he exhibits in miniature the
larger processes of Nature. We will suppose,
then—­taking a simple phrase as the fairest
for the experiment—­that Mr. Macaulay found
Barillon saying in French, “le drole m’a
fait peur,” or Burnet saying in English,
“the fellow frightened me.”
We should be pretty sure not to find the same words
in Mr. Macaulay. He would pause—­he
would first consider whether “the fellow”
spoken of was a Whig or a Tory.
If a Whig, the thing would be treated as a joke, and
Mr. Macaulay would transmute it playfully into “the
rogue startled me”; but if a Tory,
it would take a deeper dye, and we should find “the
villain assaulted me”; and in either case
we should have a grave reference to

Jan. 31,
“Barillon,-------- 1686”; or, “Burnet, i. 907.”
Feb. 1,

If our reader will keep this formula in his mind,
he will find it a fair exponent of Mr. Macaulay’s
modus operandi....

We shall now proceed to more general topics.
We decline, as we set out by saying, to treat this
“New Atalantis” as a serious history, and
therefore we shall not trouble our readers with matters
of such remote interest as the errors and anachronisms
with which the chapter that affects to tell our earlier
history abounds. Our readers would take no great
interest in a discussion whether Hengist was as fabulous
as Hercules, Alaric a Christian born, and “the
fair chapels of New College and St. George”
at Windsor of the same date. But there is one
subject in that chapter on which we cannot refrain
from saying a few words—­THE CHURCH.

We decline to draw any inferences from this work as
to Mr. Macaulay’s own religious opinions; but
it is our duty to say—­and we trust we may
do so without offence—­that Mr. Macaulay’s
mode of dealing with the general principle of Church
government, and the doctrine, discipline, and influence
of the Church of England, cannot fail to give serious
pain, and sometimes to excite a stronger feeling than
pain, in the mind of every friend to that Church,
whether in its spiritual or corporate character.

Page 130

He starts with a notion that the fittest engine to
redeem England from the mischiefs and mistakes of
oligarchical feudalism was to be found in the imposing
machinery and deception of the Roman Church; overlooking
the great truth that it was not the Romish Church,
but the genius of Christianity, working its vast but
silent change, which was really guiding on the chariot
of civilization; but in this broad principle there
was not enough of the picturesqueness of detail to
captivate his mind. It would not suit him to
distinguish between the Church of Christ and the web
of corruptions that had grown about her, but could
not effectually arrest the benignant influence inherent
in her mainspring. He therefore leads his readers
to infer that Christianity came first to Britain with
St. Austin, and for aught that Mr. Macaulay condescends
to inform us, the existence of a prior Anglo-Saxon
Church was a monkish fiction. The many unhappy
circumstances of the position taken up by the Romish
Church in its struggles for power—­some of
them unavoidable, it may be, if such a battle were
to be fought—­are actually displayed as so
many blessings, attainable only by a system which the
historian himself condemns elsewhere as baneful and
untrue. He maintains these strange paradoxes
and contradictions with a pertinacity quite surprising.
He doubts whether a true form of Christianity would
have answered the purposes of liberty and civilization
half so well as the acknowledged duplicities of the
Church of Rome.

It may perhaps be doubted whether a purer
religion might not have been
found a less efficient agent.—­i.
23.

There is a point in the life both of an
individual and a society at
which submission and faith, such as at
a later period would be justly
called servility and credulity, are useful
qualities.—­i. 47.

These are specimens of the often exposed fallacies
in which he delights to indulge. Place right
and wrong in a state of uncertainty by reflected lights,
and you may fill up your picture as you like.
And such for ever is Mr. Macaulay’s principle
of art. It is not the elimination of error that
he seeks for, but an artistic balance of conflicting
forces. And this he pursues throughout:
deposing the dignity of the historian for the clever
antithesis of the pamphleteer. At last, on this
great and important point of religious history—­a
point which more than any other influences every epoch
of English progress, he arrives at this pregnant and
illustrative conclusion—­

It is difficult to say whether England
owes more to the Roman Catholic
religion or to the Reformation.—­i.
49.

England owes nothing to “the Roman Catholic
religion.” She owes everything to CHRISTIANITY,
which Romanism injured and hampered but could not
destroy, and which the Reformation freed at least from
the worst of those impure and impeding excrescences.

Page 131

With regard to his treatment of the Reformation, and
especially of the Church of England, it is very difficult
to give our readers an adequate idea. Throughout
a system of depreciation—­we had almost said
insult—­is carried on: sneers, sarcasms,
injurious comparisons, sly misrepresentations, are
all adroitly mingled throughout the narrative, so
as to produce an unfavourable impression, which the
author has not the frankness to attempt directly.
Even when obliged to approach the subject openly,
it is curious to observe how, under a slight veil of
impartiality, imputations are raised and calumnies
accredited. For instance, early in the first
volume he gives us his view of the English Reformation,
as a kind of middle term, emerging out of the antagonist
struggles of the Catholics and Calvinists: and
it is impossible not to see that, between the three
parties, he awards to the Catholics the merit of unity
and consistency; to the Calvinists, of reason and
independence; to the Anglicans, the lowest motives
of expediency and compromise. To enforce this
last topic he relies on the inconsistencies, some
real and some imaginary, imputed to Cranmer, whose
notions of worldly expedience he chooses to represent
as the source of the Anglican Church....

Every one of the circumstances on which we may presume
that Mr. Macaulay would rely as justifying these charges
has been long since, to more candid judgments, either
disproved, explained, or excused, and in truth whatever
blame can be justly attributed to any of them, belongs
mainly, if not exclusively, to those whose violence
and injustice drove a naturally upright and most conscientious
man into the shifts and stratagems of self-defence.
With the greatest fault and the only crime that Charles
in his whole life committed Mr. Macaulay does not reproach
him—­the consent to the execution of Lord
Strafford—­that indeed, as he himself penitentially
confessed, was a deadly weight on his conscience,
and is an indelible stain on his character; but even
that guilt and shame belongs in a still greater degree
to Mr. Macaulay’s patriot heroes.

This leads us to the conclusive plea which we enter
to Mr. Macaulay’s indictment, namely—­that
all those acts alleged as the excuses of rebellion
and regicide occurred after the rebellion had broken
out, and were at worst only devices of the unhappy
King to escape from the regicide which he early foresaw.
It was really the old story of the wolf and the lamb.
It was far down the stream of rebellion that these
acts of supposed perfidy on the part of Charles could
be said to have troubled it.

But while he thus deals with the lamb, let us see
how he treats the wolf. We have neither space
nor taste for groping through the long and dark labyrinth
of Cromwell’s proverbial duplicity and audacious
apostacy: we shall content ourselves with two
facts, which, though stated in the gentlest way by
Mr. Macaulay, will abundantly justify the opinion
which all mankind, except a few republican zealots,

Page 132

hold of that man’s sincerity, of whose abilities,
wonderful as they were, the most remarkable, and perhaps
the most serviceable to his fortunes, was his hypocrisy;
so much so, that South—­a most acute observer
of mankind, and who had been educated under the Commonwealth
and Protectorate—­in his sermon on “Worldly
Wisdom,” adduces Cromwell as an instance of “habitual
dissimulation and imposture.” Oliver, Mr.
Macaulay tells us, modelled his army on the principle
of composing it of men fearing God, and zealous for
public liberty, and in the very next page he
is forced to confess that

thirteen years followed in which for the
first and the last time the
civil power of our country was subjected
to military dictation.—­i.
120.

Again,

Oliver had made his choice. He had
kept the hearts of his soldiers,
but he had broken with every other
class of his fellow citizens.—­i.
129.

That is, he had broken through all the promises, pledges,
and specious pretences by which he had deceived and
enslaved the nation, which Mr. Macaulay calls with
such opportune naivete, his fellow citizens!
Then follows, not a censure of this faithless usurpation,
but many laboured apologies, and even defences of
it, and a long series of laudatory epithets, some
of which are worth collecting as a rare contrast to
Mr. Macaulay’s usual style, and particularly
to the abuse of Charles, which we have just exhibited.

His genius and resolution made
him more absolute master of his
country than any of her legitimate
Kings had been.—­i. 129.

He having cut off the legitimate King’s head
on a pretence that Charles had wished to make himself
absolutely master of the country.

Everything yielded to the vigour and
ability of Cromwell.—­i. 130.

The Government, though in the form of
a Republic, was in truth a
despotism, moderated only by the wisdom,
the sober-mindedness, and
the magnanimity of the despot.—­i.
137.

With a vast deal more of the same tone.

But Mr. Macaulay particularly expatiates on the influence
that Cromwell exercised over foreign states:
and there is hardly any topic to which he recurs with
more pleasure, or, as we think, with less sagacity,
than the terror with which Cromwell and the contempt
with which the Stuarts inspired the nations of Europe.
He somewhat exaggerates the extent of this feeling,
and greatly misstates or mistakes the cause; and as
this subject is in the present state of the world
of more importance than any others in the work, we
hope we may be excused for some observations tending
to a sounder opinion on that subject.

Page 133

It was not, as Mr. Macaulay everywhere insists, the
personal abilities and genius of Cromwell that exclusively,
or even in the first degree, carried his foreign influence
higher than that of the Stuarts. The internal
struggles that distracted and consumed the strength
of these islands throughout their reigns necessarily
rendered us little formidable to our neighbours; and
it is with no good grace that a Whig historian stigmatises
that result as shameful; for, without discussing whether
it was justifiable or not, the fact is certain, that
it was opposition of the Whigs—­often in
rebellion and always in faction against the Government—­which
disturbed all progress at home and paralysed every
effort abroad. We are not, we say, now discussing
whether that opposition was not justifiable and may
not have been ultimately advantageous in several constitutional
points; we think it decidedly was: but at present
all we mean to do is to show that it had a great share
in producing on our foreign influence the lowering
effects of which Mr. Macaulay complains.

And there is still another consideration which escapes
Mr. Macaulay in his estimate of such usurpers as Cromwell
and Buonaparte. A usurper is always more terrible
both at home and abroad than a legitimate sovereign:
first, the usurper is likely to be (and in these two
cases was) a man of superior genius and military glory,
wielding the irresistible power of the sword; but
there is still stronger contrast—­ legitimate
Governments are bound—­at home by laws—­abroad
by treaties, family ties, and international interests;
they acknowledge the law of nations, and are limited,
even in hostilities, by many restraints and bounds.
The despotic usurpers had no fetters of either sort—­they
had no opposition at home, and no scruples abroad.
Law, treaties, rights, and the like, had been already
broken through like cobwebs, and kings naturally humbled
themselves before a vigour that had dethroned and
murdered kings, and foreign nations trembled at a power
that had subdued in their own fields and cities the
pride of England and the gallantry of France!
To contrast Cromwell and Charles II, Napoleon and Louis
XVIII, is sheer nonsense and mere verbiage—­it
is as if one should compare the house-dog and the
wolf, and argue that the terror inspired by the latter
was very much to his honour. All this is such
a mystery to Mr. Macaulay that he wanders into two
theories so whimsical, that we hesitate between passing
them by as absurdities, or producing them for amusement;
we adopt the latter. One is that Cromwell could
have no interest and therefore no personal share in
the death of Charles. “Whatever Cromwell
was,” says Mr. Macaulay, “he was no fool;
and he must have known that Charles I was obviously
a less difficulty in his way than Charles II.”
Cromwell, we retain the phrase, “was no fool,”
and he thought and found that Charles II, was,
as far as he was concerned, no difficulty at all.
The real truth was, that the revolutionary party in

Page 134

England in 1648, like that in France in 1792, was
but a rope of sand which nothing could cement and
consolidate but the blood of the Kings—­that
was a common crime and a common and indissoluble tie
which gave all their consistency and force to both
revolutions—­a stroke of original sagacity
in Cromwell and of imitative dexterity in Robespierre.
If Mr. Macaulay admits, as he subsequently does (i.
129), that the regicide was “a sacrament of
blood,” by which the party became irrevocably
bound to each other and separated from the rest of
the nation, how can he pretend that Cromwell derived
no advantage from it? In fact, his admiration—­we
had almost said fanaticism—­for Cromwell
betrays him throughout into the blindest inconsistencies.

The second vision of Mr. Macaulay is, if possible,
still more absurd. He imagines a Cromwell dynasty!
If it had not been for Monk and his army, the rest
of the nation would have been loyal to the son of the
illustrious Oliver.

Had the Protector and the Parliament been
suffered to proceed undisturbed, there can be little
doubt that an order of things similar to that which
was afterwards established under the House of Hanover,
would have been established under the house of Cromwell.—­i.
142.

And yet in a page or two Mr. Macaulay is found making
an admission—­ made, indeed, with the object
of disparaging Monk and the royalists—­but
which gives to his theory of a Cromwellian dynasty
the most conclusive refutation.

It was probably not till Monk had been
some days in the capital that he made up his mind.
The cry of the whole people was for a free parliament;
and there could be no doubt that a parliament really
free would instantly restore the exiled family.—­i.
147.

All this hypothesis of a Cromwellian dynasty looks
like sheer nonsense; but we have no doubt it has a
meaning, and we request our readers not to be diverted
by the almost ludicrous partiality and absurdity of
Mr. Macaulay’s speculations from an appreciation
of the deep hostility to the monarchy from which they
arise. They are like bubbles on the surface of
a dark pool, which indicate there is something rotten
below.

We should if we had time have many other complaints
to make of the details of this chapter, which are
deeply coloured with all Mr. Macaulay’s prejudices
and passions. He is, we may almost say of course,
violent and unjust against Strafford and Clarendon;
and the most prominent touch of candour that we can
find in this period of his history is, that he slurs
over the murder of Laud in an abscure half-line (i.
119) as if he were—­as we hope he really
is—­ashamed of it.

Page 135

We now arrive at what we have heard called the celebrated
third chapter —­celebrated it deserves to
be, and we hope our humble observations may add something
to its celebrity. There is no feature of Mr. Macaulay’s
book on which, we believe, he more prides himself,
and which has been in truth more popular with his
readers, than the descriptions which he introduces
of the residences, habits, and manners of our ancestors.
They are, provided you do not look below the surface,
as entertaining as Pepys or Pennant, or any of the
many scrap-book histories which have been recently
fabricated from those old materials; but when we come
to examine them, we find that in these cases, as everywhere
else, Mr. Macaulay’s propensity to caricature
and exaggerate leads him not merely to disfigure circumstances,
but totally to forget the principle on which such
episodes are admissible into regular history—­namely,
the illustration of the story. They should be,
as it were, woven into the narrative, and not, as
Mr. Macaulay generally treats them, stitched on like
patches. This latter observation does not of course
apply to the collecting a body of miscellaneous facts
into a separate chapter, as Hume and others have done;
but Mr. Macaulay’s chapter, besides, as we shall
show, the prevailing inaccuracy of its details, has
one general and essential defect specially its own.

The moment Mr. Macaulay has selected for suspending
his narrative to take a view of the surface and society
of England is the death of Charles II. Now we
think no worse point of time could have been chosen
for tracing the obscure but very certain connection
between political events and the manners of a people.
The restoration, for instance, was an era in manners
as well as in politics—­so was in a fainter
degree the Revolution—­either, or both,
of those periods would have afforded a natural position
for contemplating a going and a coming order of things;
but we believe that there are no two periods in our
annals which were so identical in morals and politics—­so
undistinguishable, in short, in any national view—­as
the latter years of Charles and the earlier years of
James. Here then is an objection in limine
to this famous chapter—­and not in limine
only, but in substance; for in fact the period he has
chosen would not have furnished out the chapter, four-fifths
of which belong to a date later than that which he
professes to treat of. In short, the chapter
is like an old curiosity-shop, into which—­no
matter whether it happens to stand in Charles Street,
William Street, or George Street—­the knick-knacks
of a couple of centuries are promiscuously jumbled.
What does it signify, in a history of the reign of
Charles II, that a writer, “sixty years after
the Revolution” (i. 347), says that in the
lodging-houses at Bath “the hearth-slabs”
were “freestone, not marble”—­that
“the best apartments were hung with coarse woollen
stuff, and furnished with rush-bottomed chairs"?—­nay,
that he should have the personal good taste to lament
that in those Boeotian days “not a wainscot
was painted” (348); and yet this twaddle
of the reign of George II, patched into the times
of Charles II, is the appropriate occasion which he
takes to panegyrise this new mode of elucidating history?—...

Page 136

It is a curious and, to persons of our opinions, not
unsatisfactory circumstance, that, though Mr. Macaulay
almost invariably applies the term Tory in
an opprobrious or contemptuous sense, yet so great
is the power of truth in surmounting the fantastical
forms and colours laid over it by this brilliant badigeonneur,
that on the whole no one, we believe, can rise from
the work without a conviction that the Tories (whatever
may be said of their prejudices) were the honestest
and most conscientious of the whole dramatis personae;
and it is this fact that in several instances and
circumstances imprints, as it were by force, upon
Mr. Macaulay’s pages an air of impartiality and
candour very discordant from their general spirit.

We are now arrived at the fourth chapter—­really
the first, strictly speaking, of Mr. Macaulay’s
history—­the accession of James II, where
also Sir James Mackintosh’s history commences.
And here we have to open to our readers the most extraordinary
instance of parallelism between two writers,
unacknowledged by the later one, which we have ever
seen. Sir James Mackintosh left behind him a
history of the Revolution, which was published in
1834, three years after his death, in quarto:
it comes down to the Orange invasion, and, though
it apparently had not received the author’s
last corrections, and was clumsily edited, and tagged
with a continuation by a less able hand, the work
is altogether (bating not a little ultra-Whiggery)
very creditable to Mackintosh’s diligence, taste,
and power of writing; it is indeed, we think, his best
and most important work, and that by which he will
be most favourably known to posterity. From that
work Mr. Macaulay has borrowed largely—­prodigally—­
helped himself with both hands—­not merely
without acknowledging his obligation, but without
so much as alluding to the existence of any such work.
Nay—­though this we are sure was never designed—­he
inserts a note full of kindness and respect to Sir
James Mackintosh, which would naturally lead an uninformed
reader to conclude that Sir James Mackintosh, though
he had meditated such a work, had never even
begun writing it. On the 391st page of Mr. Macaulay’s
first volume, at the mention of the old news-letters
which preceded our modern newspapers, Mr. Macaulay
says, that “they form a valuable part of the
literary treasures collected by the late Sir James
Mackintosh”; and to this he adds the following
foot-note:

I take this opportunity of expressing
my warm gratitude to the family of my dear and honoured
friend Sir James Mackintosh, for confiding to me
the materials collected by him at a time when he
meditated a work similar to that which I have undertaken.
I have never seen, and I do not believe that there
anywhere exists, within the same compass, so noble
a collection of extracts from public and private
archives. The judgment with which Sir James,
in great masses of the rudest ore of history, selected

Page 137

what was valuable and rejected what was worthless,
can be fully appreciated only by one who has toiled
after him in the same mine.—­i. 391.

Could any one imagine from this that Mackintosh had
not only meditated a work, but actually written,
and that his friends had published, a large closely
printed quarto volume, on the same subject, from the
same materials, and sometimes in the very same words
as Mr. Macaulay’s?

The coincidence—­the identity, we might
almost say—­of the two works is so great,
that, while we have been comparing them, we have often
been hardly able to distinguish which was which.
We rest little on the similiarity of facts, for the
facts were ready made for both; and Mr. Macaulay tells
us that he worked from Mackintosh’s materials;
there would, therefore, even if he had never seen
Mackintosh’s work, be a community of topics
and authorities; but, seeing as we do in every page
that he was writing with Mackintosh’s volume
before his eyes, we cannot account for his utter silence
about it....

Having thus shown Mr. Macaulay’s mode of dealing
with what forms the chief and most characteristic
feature of his book—­its anecdotical gossip—­we
shall now endeavour to exhibit the deceptive style
in which he treats the larger historical facts:
in truth the style is the same—­a general
and unhesitating sacrifice of accuracy and reality
to picturesque effect and party prejudices. He
treats historical personages as the painter does his
layman—­a supple figure which he models
into what he thinks the most striking attitude, and
dresses up with the gaudiest colours and most fantastical
draperies.

It is very difficult to condense into any manageable
space the proofs of a general system of accumulating
and aggravating all that was ever, whether truly or
falsely, reproached to the Tories, and alleviating
towards the Whigs the charges which he cannot venture
to deny or even to question. The mode in which
this is managed so as to keep up some show of impartiality
is very dexterous. The reproach, well or ill founded,
which he thinks most likely to damage the character
of any one he dislikes, is repeated over and over
again in hope that the iteration will at last be taken
for proof, such as the perfidy of Charles I, the profligacy
and selfishness of Charles II, the cold and cruel stupidity
of James, the baseness of Churchill, the indecent violence
of Rochester, the contemptible subserviency of his
brother, Clarendon, and so on through a whole dictionary
of abuse on every one whom he takes or mistakes for
a Tory, and on a few Whigs whom for some special reasons
of his own he treats like Tories. On the other
hand, when he finds himself reluctantly forced to
acknowledge even the greatest enormity of the Whigs—­corruption—­treason—­murder
he finds much gentler terms for the facts; selects
a scapegoat, some subaltern villain, or some one whom
history has already gibbeted, “to bear upon him
all their iniquities,” and that painful sacrifice
once made, he avoids with tender care a recurrence
to so disagreeable a subject....

Page 138

After so much political detail it will be some kind
of diversion to our readers to examine Mr. Macaulay’s
most elaborate strategic and topographical effort,
worked up with all the combined zeal and skill of
an ex-Secretary-at-War and a pictorial historian—­a
copious description of the battle of Sedgemoor.
Mr. Macaulay seems to have visited Bridgwater with
a zeal worthy of a better result: for it has produced
a description of the surrounding country as pompous
and detailed as if it had been the scene of some grand
strategic operations—­a parade not merely
unnecessary, but absurd, for the so-called battle was
but a bungling skirmish. Monmouth had intended
to surprise the King’s troops in their quarters
by a midnight attack, but was stopped by a wide and
deep trench, of which he was not apprised, called Bussex
Rhine, behind which the King’s army lay.
“The trenches which drain the moor are,”
Mr. Macaulay adds, “in that country called rhines.”
On each side of this ditch the parties stood firing
at each other in the dark. Lord Grey and the
cavalry ran away without striking a blow; Monmouth
followed them, too, soon; for some time the foot stood
with a degree of courage and steadiness surprising
in such raw and half-armed levies; at last the King’s
cavalry got round their flank, and they too ran:
the King’s foot then crossed the ditch with
little or no resistance, and slaughtered, with small
loss on their own side, a considerable number of the
fugitives, the rest escaping back to Bridgwater.
Our readers will judge whether such a skirmish required
a long preliminary description of the surrounding
country. Mr. Macaulay might just as usefully have
described the plain of Troy. Indeed at the close
of his long topographical and etymological narrative
Mr. Macaulay has the tardy candour to confess that—­

little is now to be learned by visiting
the field of battle, for the face of the country
has been greatly changed, and the old Bussex Rhine,
on the banks of which the great struggle took place,
has long disappeared.

This is droll. After spending a deal of space
and fine writing in describing the present prospect,
he concludes by telling us candidly it is all of no
use, for the whole scene has changed. This is
like Walpole’s story of the French lady who
asked for her lover’s picture; and when he demurred
observing that, if her husband were to see it, it
might betray their secret—­“O dear,
no,” she said—­just like Mr. Macaulay—­“I
will have the picture, but it need not be
like!”

But even as to the change, we again doubt Mr. Macaulay’s
accuracy. The word Rhine in Somersetshire,
as perhaps—­parva componere magnis—­in
the great German river, means running water,
and we therefore think it very unlikely that a running
stream should have disappeared; but we also find in
the Ordnance Survey of Somersetshire, made in our own
time, the course and name of Bussck’s Rhine
distinctly laid down in front of Weston, where it
probably ran in Monmouth’s day; and we are further
informed, in return to some inquiries that we have
caused to be made, that the Rhine is now, in
1849, as visible and well known as ever it was.

Page 139

But this grand piece of the military topography of
a battlefield where there was no battle must have
its picturesque and pathetic episode, and Mr. Macaulay
finds one well suited to such a novel. When Monmouth
had made up his mind to attempt to surprise
the royal army, Mr. Macaulay is willing (for a purpose
which we shall see presently) to persuade himself
that the Duke let the whole town into his secret:—­

That an attack was to be made under cover
of the night was no secret in Bridgwater. The
town was full of women, who had repaired thither by
hundreds from the surrounding region to see their
husbands, sons, lovers, and brothers once more.
There were many sad partings that day; and many
parted never to meet again. The report of the
intended attack came to the ears of a young girl
who was zealous for the king. Though of modest
character, she had the courage to resolve that she
would herself bear the intelligence to Feversham.
She stole out of Bridgwater, and made her way to
the royal camp. But that camp was not a place
where female innocence could be safe. Even the
officers, despising alike the irregular force to
which they were opposed, and the negligent general
who commanded them, had indulged largely in wine,
and were ready for any excess of licentiousness and
cruelty. One of them seized the unhappy maiden,
refused to listen to her errand, and brutally outraged
her. She fled in agonies of rage and shame, leaving
the wicked army to its doom.—­i. 606, 7.

—­the doom of the wicked army, be
it noted en passant, being a complete victory.
Mr. Macaulay cites Kennett for this story, and adds
that he is “forced to believe the story
to be true, because Kennett declares that it was communicated
to him in the year 1718 by a brave officer who had
fought at Sedgemoor, and had himself seen the poor
girl depart in an agony of distress,”—­ib.

We shall not dwell on the value of an anonymous story
told three-and-thirty years after the Battle
of Sedgemoor. The tale is sufficiently refuted
by notorious facts and dates, and indeed by its internal
absurdity. We know from the clear and indisputable
evidence of Wade, who commanded Monmouth’s infantry,
all the proceedings of that day. Monmouth no
doubt intended to move that night, and made open preparation
for it, and the partings so pathetically described
may have, therefore, taken place, and the rather because
the intended movement was to leave that part of the
country altogether—­not to meet the
King’s troops, but to endeavour to escape them
by a forced march across the Avon and into Gloucestershire.
So far might have been known. But about three
o’clock that afternoon Monmouth received intelligence
by a spy that the King’s troops had advanced
to Sedgemoor, but had taken their positions so injudiciously,
that there seemed a possibility of surprising them
in a night attack. On this Monmouth assembled

Page 140

a council of war, which agreed that, instead of retreating
that night towards the Avon as they had intended,
they should advance and attack, provided the spy, who
was to be sent out to a new reconnoissance, should
report that the troops were not intrenched. We
may be sure that—­as the news only arrived
at three in the afternoon—­the assembling
the council of war—­the deliberation—­
the sending back the spy—­his return and
another deliberation—­must have protracted
the final decision to so late an hour that evening,
that it is utterly impossible that the change of the
design of a march northward to that of an “attack
to be made under cover of the night,” could
have been that morning no secret in Bridgwater.
But our readers see it was necessary for Mr. Macaulay
to raise this fable, in order to account for the poor
girl’s knowing so important a secret. So
far we have argued the case on Mr. Macaulay’s
own showing, which, we confess, was very incautious
on our part; but on turning to his authority we find,
as usual, a story essentially different. Kennett
says—­

A brave Captain in the Horse Guards, now
living (1718), was in the action at Sedgemoor, and
gave me the account of it:—­That on Sunday
morning, July 5, a young woman came from Monmouth’s
quarters to give notice of his design to surprise
the King’s camp that night; but this
young woman being carried to a chief officer in a neighbouring
village, she was led upstairs and debauched by him,
and, coming down in a great fright and disorder
(as he himself saw her), she went back, and her
message was not told.—­Kennett, in.
432.

This knocks the whole story on the head. Kennett
was not aware (Wade’s narrative not being published
when he wrote) that the King’s troops did not
come in sight of Sedgemoor till about three o’clock
P.M. of that Sunday on the early morning of which
he places the girl’s visit to the camp, and
it was not till late that same evening that Monmouth
changed his original determination, and formed the
sudden resolution with which, to support Kennett’s
story, the whole town must have been acquainted at
least twelve hours before. These are considerations
which ought not to have escaped a philosophical historian
who had the advantage, which Kennett had not, of knowing
the exact time when these details occurred....

We must here conclude. We have exhausted our
time and our space, but not our topics. We have
selected such of the more prominent defects and errors
of Mr. Macaulay as were manageable within our limits;
but numerous as they are, we beg that they may be
considered as specimens only of the infinitely larger
assortment that the volumes would afford, and be read
not merely as individual instances, but as indications
of the general style of the work, and the prevailing
animus of the writer. We have chiefly
directed our attention to points of mere historical
inaccuracy and infidelity; but they are combined with

Page 141

a greater admixture of other—­we know not
whether to call them literary or moral—­defects,
than the insulated passages sufficiently exhibit.
These faults, as we think them, but which may to some
readers be the prime fascinations of the work, abound
on its surface. And their very number and their
superficial prominence constitute a main charge against
the author, and prove, we think, his mind to be unfitted
for the severity of historical inquiry. He takes
much pains to parade—­perhaps he really
believes in—­his impartiality, with what
justice we appeal to the foregoing pages; but he is
guilty of a prejudice as injurious in its consequences
to truth as any political bias. He abhors whatever
is not in itself picturesque, while he clings with
the tenacity of a Novelist to the piquant and
the startling. Whether it be the boudoir of a
strumpet or the death-bed of a monarch—­the
strong character of a statesman-warrior abounding
in contrasts and rich in mystery, or the personal
history of a judge trained in the Old Bailey to vulgarize
and ensanguine the King’s Bench—­he
luxuriates with a vigour and variety of language and
illustration which renders his “History”
an attractive and absorbing story-book. And so
spontaneously redundant are these errors—­
so inwoven in the very texture of Mr. Macaulay’s
mind—­that he seems never able to escape
from them. Even after the reader is led to believe
that all that can be said either of praise or vituperation
as to character, of voluptuous description and minute
delineation as to fact and circumstance, has been
passed in review before him—­when a new
subject, indeed, seems to have been started—­all
at once the old theme is renewed, and the old ideas
are redressed in all the affluent imagery and profuse
eloquence of which Mr. Macaulay is so eminent a master.
Now of the fancy and fashion of this we should not
complain—­quite the contrary—­in
a professed novel: there is a theatre in which
it would be exquisitely appropriate and attractive;
but the Temple of History is not the floor for a morris-dance—­the
Muse Clio is not to be worshipped in the halls of
Terpsichore. We protest against this species of
carnival history; no more like the reality
than the Eglintoun Tournament or the Costume Quadrilles
of Buckingham Palace; and we deplore the squandering
of so much melodramatic talent on a subject which we
have hitherto reverenced as the figure of Truth arrayed
in the simple argments [Transcriber’s note:
sic] of Philosophy. We are ready to admit an
hundred times over Mr. Macaulay’s literary powers—­brilliant
even under the affectation with which he too frequently
disfigures them. He is a great painter, but a
suspicious narrator; a grand proficient in the picturesque,
but a very poor professor of the historic. These
volumes have been, and his future volumes as they
appear will be, devoured with the same eagerness that
Oliver Twist or Vanity Fair excite—­with
the same quality of zest, though perhaps with a higher
degree of it;—­but his pages will seldom,
we think, receive a second perusal—­and the
work, we apprehend, will hardly find a permanent place
on the historic shelf—­ nor ever assuredly,
if continued in the spirit of the first two volumes,
be quoted as authority on any question or point of
the History of England.

Page 142

LOCKHART ON THE AUTHOR OF “VATHEK"[1]

[From The Quarterly Review, June, 1834]

[1] “Italy: with sketches of Spain and
Portugal. In a series of letters
written during a residence
in these Countries.” By William Beckford,
Esq., author of Vathek.
London, 1834.

Vathek is, indeed, without reference to the time of
life [before he had closed his twentieth year] when
the author penned it, a very remarkable performance;
but, like most of the works of the great poet (Byron)
who has eloquently praised it, it is stained with
poison-spots—­its inspiration is too often
such as might have been inhaled in the “Hall
of Eblis.” We do not allude so much to
its audacious licentiousness, as to the diabolical
levity of its contempt for mankind. The boy-author
appears to have already rubbed all the bloom off his
heart; and, in the midst of his dazzling genius, one
trembles to think that a stripling of years so tender
should have attained the cool cynicism of a Candide.
How different is the effect of that Eastern tale of
our own days, which Lord Byron ought not to have forgotten
when he was criticising his favourite romance.
How perfectly does Thalaba realize the ideal
demanded in the Welsh Triad, of “fulness of erudition,
simplicity of language, and purity of manners.”
But the critic was repelled by the purity of that
delicious creation, more than attracted by the erudition
which he must have respected, and the diction which
he could not but admire—­

The low sweet voice so musical,
That with such deep and undefined delight
Fills the surrender’d soul.

It has long been known that Mr. Beckford prepared,
shortly after the publication of his Vathek,
some other tales in the same vein—­the histories,
it is supposed, of the princes in his “Hall of
Eblis.” A rumour had also prevailed, that
the author drew up, early in life, some account of
his travels in various parts of the world; nay, that
he had printed a few copies of this account, and that
its private perusal had been eminently serviceable
to more than one of the most popular poets of the
present age. But these were only vague reports;
and Mr. Beckford, after achieving, on the verge of
manhood, a literary reputation, which, however brilliant,
could not satisfy the natural ambition of such an
intellect—­seemed, for more than fifty years,
to have wholly withdrawn himself from the only field
of his permanent distinction. The world heard
enough of his gorgeous palace at Cintra (described
in Childe Harold), afterwards of the unsubstantial
pageant of his splendour at Fonthill, and latterly
of his architectural caprices at Bath. But his
literary name seemed to have belonged to another age;
and, perhaps, in this point of view, it may not have
been unnatural for Lord Byron, when comparing Vathek
with other Eastern tales, to think rather of Zadig
and Rasselas, than

Page 143

Of Thalaba—­the wild and wondrous
song.

The preface to the present volumes informs us that
they include a reprint of the book of travels, of
which a small private edition passed through the press
forty years ago, and of the existence of which—­though
many of our readers must have heard some hints—­few
could have had any knowledge. Mr. Beckford
has at length been induced to publish his letters,
in order to vindicate his own original claim to certain
thoughts, images, and expressions, which had been adopted
by other authors whom he had from time to time received
beneath his roof, and indulged with a perusal of his
secret lucubrations. The mere fact that such
a work has lain for near half-a-century, printed but
unpublished, would be enough to stamp the author’s
personal character as not less extraordinary than
his genius. It is, indeed, sufficiently obvious
that Mr. Rogers had read it before he wrote his “Italy
“—­a poem, however, which possesses
so many exquisite beauties entirely its own, that it
may easily afford to drop the honour of some, perhaps
unconsciously, appropriated ones; and we are also
satisfied that this book had passed through Mr. Moore’s
hands before he gave us his light and graceful “Rhymes
on the Road,” though the traces of his imitation
are rarer than those which must strike everyone who
is familiar with the “Italy.” We
are not so sure as to Lord Byron; but, although we
have not been able to lay our finger on any one passage
in which he has evidently followed Mr. Beckford’s
vein, it will certainly rather surprise us should it
hereafter be made manifest that he had not seen, or
at least heard an account of, this performance, before
he conceived the general plan of his “Childe
Harold.” Mr. Beckford’s book is entirely
unlike any book of travel in prose that exists
in any European language; and if we could fancy Lord
Byron to have written the “Harold” in the
measure of “Don Juan,” and to have availed
himself of the facilities which the ottima rima
affords for intermingling high poetry with merriment
of all sorts, and especially with sarcastic sketches
of living manners, we believe the result would have
been a work more nearly akin to that now before us
than any other in the library.

Mr. Beckford, like “Harold,” passes through
various regions of the world, and, disdaining to follow
the guide-book, presents his reader with a series
of detached, or very slenderly connected sketches of
the scenes that had made the deepest impression
upon himself. He, when it suits him, puts
the passage of the Alps into a parenthesis. On
one occasion, he really treats Rome as if it had been
nothing more than a post station on the road from
Florence to Naples; but, again, if the scenery and
people take his fancy, “he has a royal reluctance
to move on, as his own hero showed when his eye glanced
on the grands caracteres rouges, traces par la main
de Carathis?... Qui me donnera des loix?—­
s’ecria le Caliphe.”

Page 144

“England’s wealthiest son” performs
his travels, of course, in a style of great external
splendour.

Conspictuus longe cunctisque notabilis
intrat—­

Courts and palaces, as well as convents and churches,
and galleries of all sorts, fly open at his approach:
he is caressed in every capital—­he is fete
in every chateau. But though he appears amidst
such accompaniments with all the airiness of a Juan,
he has a thread of the blackest of Harold in his texture;
and every now and then seems willing to draw a veil
between him and the world of vanities. He is a
poet, and a great one too, though we know not that
he ever wrote a line of verse. His rapture amidst
the sublime scenery of mountains and forests—­in
the Tyrol especially, and in Spain—­is that
of a spirit cast originally in one of nature’s
finest moulds; and he fixes it in language which can
scarcely be praised beyond its deserts—­simple,
massive, nervous, apparently little laboured, yet
revealing, in its effect, the perfection of art.
Some immortal passages in Gray’s letters and
Byron’s diaries, are the only things, in our
tongue, that seem to us to come near the profound
melancholy, blended with a picturesqueness of description
at once true and startling, of many of these extraordinary
pages. Nor is his sense for the highest
beauty of art less exquisite. He seems to describe
classical architecture, and the pictures of the great
Italian schools, with a most passionate feeling of
the grand, and with an inimitable grace of expression.
On the other hand, he betrays, in a thousand places,
a settled voluptuousness of temperament, and a capricious
recklessness of self-indulgence, which will lead the
world to identify him henceforth with his Vathek,
as inextricably as it has long since connected Harold
with the poet that drew him; and then, that there
may be no limit to the inconsistencies of such a strange
genius, this spirit, at once so capable of the noblest
enthusiasm, and so dashed with the gloom of over-pampered
luxury, can stoop to chairs and china, ever and anon,
with the zeal of an auctioneer—­revel in
the design of a clock or a candlestick, and be as
ecstatic about a fiddler or a soprano as the fools
in Hogarth’s concert. On such occasions
he reminds us, and will, we think, remind everyone,
of the Lord of Strawberry Hill. But even here
all we have is on a grander scale. The oriental
prodigality of his magnificence shines out even in
trifles. He buys a library where the other would
have cheapened a missal. He is at least a male
Horace Walpole; as superior to the “silken Baron,”
as Fonthill, with its York-like tower embosomed among
hoary forests, was to that silly band-box which may
still be admired on the road to Twickenham ...

Page 145

We have no discussions of any consequence in these
volumes: even the ultra-aristocratical opinions
and feelings of the author—­who is, we presume,
a Whig—­are rather hinted than avowed.
From a thousand passing sneers, we may doubt whether
he has any religion at all; but still he may
be only thinking of the outward and visible absurdities
of popery—­therefore we have hardly a pretext
for treating these matters seriously. In short,
this is meant to be, as he says in his preface, nothing
but a “book of light reading”; and though
no one can read it without having many grave enough
feelings roused and agitated within him, there are
really no passages to provoke or justify any detailed
criticism either as to morals or politics ...

We risk nothing in predicting that Mr. Beckford’s
Travels will henceforth be classed among the
most elegant productions of modern literature:
they will be forthwith translated into every language
of the Continent—­and will keep his name
alive, centuries after all the brass and marble he
ever piled together have ceased to vibrate with the
echoes of Modenhas.

ON COLERIDGE

[From The Quarterly Review, August, 1834]

The Poetical Works of S.T. Coleridge.
3 vols. 12mo. London, 1834.

Let us be indulged, in the mean time, in this opportunity
of making a few remarks on the genius of the extraordinary
man whose poems, now for the first time completely
collected, are named at the head of this article.
The larger part of this publication is, of course,
of old date, and the author still lives; yet, besides
the considerable amount of new matter in this edition,
which might of itself, in the present dearth of anything
eminently original in verse, justify our notice, we
think the great, and yet somewhat hazy, celebrity
of Coleridge, and the ill-understood character of
his poetry, will be, in the opinion of a majority
of our readers, more than an excuse for a few elucidatory
remarks upon the subject. Idolized by many, and
used without scruple by more, the poet of “Christabel”
and the “Ancient Mariner” is but little
truly known in that common literary world, which, without
the prerogative of conferring fame hereafter, can
most surely give or prevent popularity for the present.
In that circle he commonly passes for a man of genius,
who has written some very beautiful verses, but whose
original powers, whatever they were, have been long
since lost or confounded in the pursuit of metaphysic
dreams. We ourselves venture to think very differently
of Mr. Coleridge, both as a poet and a philosopher,
although we are well enough aware that nothing which
we can say will, as matters now stand, much advance
his chance of becoming a fashionable author.
Indeed, as we rather believe, we should earn small
thanks from him for our happiest exertions in such
a cause; for certainly, of all the men of letters
whom it has been our fortune to know, we never met

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any one who was so utterly regardless of the reputation
of the mere author as Mr. Coleridge—­one
so lavish and indiscriminate in the exhibition of
his own intellectual wealth before any and every person,
no matter who—­one so reckless who might
reap where he had most prodigally sown and watered.
“God knows,”—­as we once heard
him exclaim upon the subject of his unpublished system
of philosophy,—­“God knows, I have
no author’s vanity about it. I should be
absolutely glad if I could hear that the thing
had been done before me.” It is somewhere
told of Virgil, that he took more pleasure in the
good verses of Varius and Horace than in his own.
We would not answer for that; but the story has always
occurred to us, when we have seen Mr. Coleridge criticising
and amending the work of a contemporary author with
much more zeal and hilarity than we ever perceived
him to display about anything of his own.

Perhaps our readers may have heard repeated a saying
of Mr. Wordsworth, that many men of this age had done
wonderful things, as Davy, Scott, Cuvier, &c.;
but that Coleridge was the only wonderful man
he ever knew. Something, of course, must be allowed
in this as in all other such cases for the antithesis;
but we believe the fact really to be, that the greater
part of those who have occasionally visited Mr. Coleridge
have left him with a feeling akin to the judgment
indicated in the above remark. They admire the
man more than his works, or they forget the works
in the absorbing impression made by the living author.
And no wonder. Those who remember him in his
more vigorous days can bear witness to the peculiarity
and transcendant power of his conversational eloquence.
It was unlike anything that could be heard elsewhere;
the kind was different, the degree was different,
the manner was different. The boundless range
of scientific knowledge, the brilliancy and exquisite
nicety of illustration, the deep and ready reasoning,
the strangeness and immensity of bookish lore—­were
not all; the dramatic story, the joke, the pun, the
festivity, must be added—­and with these
the clerical-looking dress, the thick waving silver
hair, the youthful-coloured cheek, the indefinable
mouth and lips, the quick yet steady and penetrating
greenish grey eye, the slow and continuous enunciation,
and the everlasting music of his tones,—­all
went to make up the image and constitute the living
presence of the man. He is now no longer young,
and bodily infirmities, we regret to know, have pressed
heavily upon him. His natural force is indeed
abated; but his eye is not dim, neither is his mind
yet enfeebled. “O youth!” he says
in one of the most exquisitely finished of his later
poems—­

O youth! for years so many and sweet,
’Tis known that thou and I were
one,
I’ll think it but a fond conceit—­
It cannot be that thou art gone!
Thy vesper bell hath not yet tolled:—­
And thou wert aye a masker bold!
What strange disguise hast now put on,
To make believe that thou art gone?
I see these locks in silvery slips,
This drooping gait, this altered size;—­
But springtide blossoms on thy lips,
And tears take sunshine from thine eyes!
Life is but thought: so think I will
That Youth and I are house-mates still.

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Mr. Coleridge’s conversation, it is true, has
not now all the brilliant versatility of his former
years; yet we know not whether the contrast between
his bodily weakness and his mental power does not leave
a deeper and more solemnly affecting impression, than
his most triumphant displays in youth could ever have
done. To see the pain-stricken countenance relax,
and the contracted frame dilate under the kindling
of intellectual fire alone—­to watch the
infirmities of the flesh shrinking out of sight, or
glorified and transfigured in the brightness of the
awakening spirit—­is an awful object of contemplation;
and in no other person did we ever witness such a
distinction,—­nay, alienation of mind from
body,—­such a mastery of the purely intellectual
over the purely corporeal, as in the instance of this
remarkable man. Even now his conversation is
characterized by all the essentials of its former
excellence; there is the same individuality, the same
unexpectedness, the same universal grasp; nothing
is too high, nothing too low for it: it glances
from earth to heaven, from heaven to earth, with a
speed and a splendour, an ease and a power, which
almost seem inspired: yet its universality is
not of the same kind with the superficial ranging of
the clever talkers whose criticism and whose information
are called forth by, and spent upon, the particular
topics in hand. No; in this more, perhaps, than
in anything else is Mr. Coleridge’s discourse
distinguished: that it springs from an inner centre,
and illustrates by light from the soul. His thoughts
are, if we may so say, as the radii of a circle, the
centre of which may be in the petals of a rose, and
the circumference as wide as the boundary of things
visible and invisible. In this it was that we
always thought another eminent light of our time,
recently lost to us, an exact contrast to Mr. Coleridge
as to quality and style of conversation. You
could not in all London or England hear a more fluent,
a more brilliant, a more exquisitely elegant converser
than Sir James Mackintosh; nor could you ever find
him unprovided. But, somehow or other, it always
seemed as if all the sharp and brilliant things he
said were poured out of so many vials filled and labelled
for the particular occasion; it struck us, to use
a figure, as if his mind were an ample and well-arranged
hortus siccus, from which you might have specimens
of every kind of plant, but all of them cut and dried
for store. You rarely saw nature working at the
very moment in him. With Coleridge it was and
still is otherwise. He may be slower, more rambling,
less pertinent; he may not strike at the instant as
so eloquent; but then, what he brings forth is fresh
coined; his flowers are newly gathered, they are wet
with dew, and, if you please, you may almost see them
growing in the rich garden of his mind. The projection
is visible; the enchantment is done before your eyes.
To listen to Mackintosh was to inhale perfume; it
pleased, but did not satisfy. The effect of an
hour with Coleridge is to set you thinking; his words
haunt you for a week afterwards; they are spells,
brightenings, revelations. In short, it is, if
we may venture to draw so bold a line, the whole difference
between talent and genius.

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A very experienced short-hand writer was employed
to take down Mr. Coleridge’s lectures on Shakespeare,
but the manuscript was almost entirely unintelligible.
Yet the lecturer was, as he always is, slow and measured.
The writer—­we have some notion it was no
worse an artist than Mr. Gurney himself—­gave
this account of the difficulty: that with regard
to every other speaker whom he had ever heard, however
rapid or involved, he could almost always, by long
experience in his art, guess the form of the latter
part, or apodosis, of the sentence by the form of
the beginning; but that the conclusion of every one
of Coleridge’s sentences was a surprise
upon him. He was obliged to listen to the last
word. Yet this unexpectedness, as we termed it
before, is not the effect of quaintness or confusion
of construction; so far from it, that we believe foreigners
of different nations, especially Germans and Italians,
have often borne very remarkable testimony to the grammatical
purity and simplicity of his language, and have declared
that they generally understood what he said much better
than the sustained conversation of any other Englishman
whom they had met. It is the uncommonness of
the thoughts or the image which prevents your anticipating
the end.

We owe, perhaps, an apology to our readers for the
length of the preceding remarks; but the fact is,
so very much of the intellectual life and influence
of Mr. Coleridge has consisted in the oral communication
of his opinions, that no sketch could be reasonably
complete without a distinct notice of the peculiar
character of his powers in this particular. We
believe it has not been the lot of any other literary
man in England, since Dr. Johnson, to command the devoted
admiration and steady zeal of so many and such widely
differing disciples—­some of them having
become, and others being likely to become, fresh and
independent sources of light and moral action in themselves
upon the principles of their common master. One
half of these affectionate disciples have learned
their lessons of philosophy from the teacher’s
mouth. He has been to them as an old oracle of
the Academy or Lyceum. The fulness, the inwardness,
the ultimate scope of his doctrines has never yet
been published in print, and if disclosed, it has been
from time to time in the higher moments of conversation,
when occasion, and mood, and person begot an exalted
crisis. More than once has Mr. Coleridge said,
that with pen in hand, he felt a thousand checks and
difficulties in the expression of his meaning; but
that—­authorship aside—­he never
found the smallest hitch or impediment in the fullest
utterance of his most subtle fancies by word of mouth.
His abstrusest thoughts became rhythmical and clear
when chaunted to their own music. But let us
proceed now to the publication before us.

Page 149

This is the first complete collection of the poems
of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The addition to the
last edition is not less than a fourth of the whole,
and the greatest part of this matter has never been
printed before. It consists of many juvenile
pieces, a few of the productions of the poet’s
middle life, and more of his later years. With
regard to the additions of the first class, we should
not be surprised to hear friendly doubts expressed
as to the judgment shown in their publication.
We ourselves think otherwise; and we are very glad
to have had an opportunity of perusing them.
There may be nothing in these earlier pieces upon
which a poet’s reputation could be built; yet
they are interesting now as measuring the boyish powers
of a great author. We never read any juvenile
poems that so distinctly foretokened the character
of all that the poet has since done; in particular,
the very earliest and loosest of these little pieces
indicate that unintermitting thoughtfulness, and that
fine ear for verbal harmony in which we must venture
to think that not one of our modern poets approaches
to Coleridge.

* * * *
*

We, of course, cite these lines for little besides
their luxurious smoothness; and it is very observable,
that although the indications of the more strictly
intellectual qualities of a great poet are very often
extremely faint, as in Byron’s case, in early
youth,—­it is universally otherwise with
regard to high excellence in versification considered
apart and by itself. Like the ear for music, the
sense of metrical melody is always a natural gift;
both indeed are evidently connected with the physical
arrangement of the organs, and never to be acquired
by any effort of art. When possessed, they by
no means necessarily lead on to the achievement of
consummate harmony in music or in verse; and yet consummate
harmony in either has never been found where the natural
gift has not made itself conspicuous long before.
Spenser’s Hymns, and Shakespeare’s “Venus
and Adonis,” and “Rape of Lucrece,”
are striking instances of the overbalance of mere
sweetness of sound. Even “Comus” is
what we should, in this sense, call luxurious; and
all four gratify the outward ear much more than that
inner and severer sense which is associated with the
reason, and requires a meaning even in the very music
for its full satisfaction. Compare the versification
of the youthful pieces mentioned above with that of
the maturer works of those great poets, and you will
recognize how possible it is for verses to be exquisitely
melodious, and yet to fall far short of that exalted
excellence of numbers of which language is in itself
capable. You will feel the simple truth, that
melody is a part only of harmony. Those early
flashes were indeed auspicious tokens of the coming
glory, and involved some of the conditions and elements
of its existence; but the rhythm of the “Faerie
Queene” and of “Paradise Lost” was

Page 150

also the fruit of a distinct effort of uncommon care
and skill. The endless variety of the pauses
in the versification of these poems could not have
been the work of chance, and the adaptation of words
with reference to their asperity, or smoothness, or
strength, is equally refined and scientific.
Unless we make a partial exception of the “Castle
of Indolence,” we do not remember a single instance
of the reproduction of the exact rhythm of the Spenserian
stanza, especially of the concluding line. The
precise Miltonic movement in blank verse has never,
to our knowledge, been caught by any later poet.
It is Mr. Coleridge’s own strong remark, that
you might as well think of pushing a brick out of a
wall with your forefinger, as attempt to remove a
word out of the finished passages in Shakespeare or
Milton. The motion or transposition will alter
the thought, or the feeling, or at least the tone.
They are as pieces of Mosaic work, from which you
cannot strike the smallest block without making a
hole in the picture.

And so it is—­in due proportion—­with
Coleridge’s best poems. They are distinguished
in a remarkable degree by the perfection of their rhythm
and metrical arrangement. The labour bestowed
upon this point must have been very great; the tone
and quantity of words seem weighed in scales of gold.
It will, no doubt, be considered ridiculous by the
Fannii and Fanniae of our day to talk of varying the
trochee with the iambus, or of resolving either into
the tribrach. Yet it is evident to us that these,
and even minuter points of accentual scansion, have
been regarded by Mr. Coleridge as worthy of study
and observation. We do not, of course, mean that
rules of this kind were always in his mind while composing,
any more than that an expert disputant is always thinking
of the distinctions of mood and figure, whilst arguing;
but we certainly believe that Mr. Coleridge has almost
from the commencement of his poetic life looked upon
versification as constituting in and by itself a much
more important branch of the art poetic than most of
his eminent contemporaries appear to have done.
And this more careful study shows itself in him in
no technical peculiarities or fantastic whims, against
which the genius of our language revolts; but in a
more exact adaptation of the movement to the feeling,
and in a finer selection of particular words with
reference to their local fitness for sense and sound.
Some of his poems are complete models of versification,
exquisitely easy to all appearance, and subservient
to the meaning, and yet so subtle in the links and
transitions of the parts as to make it impossible to
produce the same effect merely by imitating the syllabic
metre as it stands on the surface. The secret
of the sweetness lies within, and is involved in the
feeling. It is this remarkable power of making
his verse musical that gives a peculiar character
to Mr. Coleridge’s lyric poems. In some
of the smaller pieces, as the conclusion of the “Kubla

Page 151

Khan,” for example, not only the lines by themselves
are musical, but the whole passage sounds all at once
as an outburst or crash of harps in the still air
of autumn. The verses seem as if played
to the ear upon some unseen instrument. And the
poet’s manner of reciting verse is similar.
It is not rhetorical, but musical: so very near
recitative, that for any one else to attempt it would
be ridiculous; and yet it is perfectly miraculous
with what exquisite searching he elicits and makes
sensible every particle of the meaning, not leaving
a shadow of a shade of the feeling, the mood, the
degree, untouched. We doubt if a finer rhapsode
ever recited at the Panathenaic festival; and the yet
unforgotten Doric of his native Devon is not altogether
without a mellowing effect in his utterance of Greek.
He would repeat the

[Greek: autar Achilleus dakrusas,
etaron aphar ezeto. k. t. l.]

with such an interpreting accompaniment of look, and
tone and gesture, that we believe any commonly-educated
person might understand the import of the passage
without knowing alpha from omega. A chapter of
Isaiah from his mouth involves the listener in an
act of exalted devotion. We have mentioned this,
to show how the whole man is made up of music; and
yet Mr. Coleridge has no ear for music, as it
is technically called. Master as he is of the
intellectual recitative, he could not sing an
air to save his life. But his delight in music
is intense and unweariable, and he can detect good
from bad with unerring discrimination. Poor Naldi,
whom most of us remember, and all who remember must
respect, said to our poet once at a concert—­“That
he did not seem much interested with a piece of Rossini’s
which had just been performed.” Coleridge
answered, “It sounded to me exactly like nonsense
verses. But this thing of Beethoven’s
that they have begun—­stop, let us listen
to this, I beg!” ...

The minute study of the laws and properties of metre
is observable in almost every piece in these volumes.
Every kind of lyric measure, rhymed and unrhymed,
is attempted with success; and we doubt whether, upon
the whole, there are many specimens of the heroic
couplet or blank verse superior in construction to
what Mr. Coleridge has given us. We mention this
the rather, because it was at one time, although that
time is past, the fashion to say that the Lake school—­as
two or three poets, essentially unlike to each other,
were foolishly called—­had abandoned the
old and established measures of the English poetry
for new conceits of their own. There was no truth
in that charge; but we will say this, that, notwithstanding
the prevalent opinion to the contrary, we are not
sure, after perusing some passages in Mr. Southey’s
“Vision of Judgment,” and the entire “Hymn
to the Earth,” in hexameters, in the second
of the volumes now before us, that the question of
the total inadmissibility of that measure in English
verse can be considered as finally settled; the true
point not being whether such lines are as good as,
or even like, the Homeric or Virgilian models, but
whether they are not in themselves a pleasing variety,
and on that account alone, if for nothing else, not
to be rejected as wholly barbarous ...

Page 152

We should not have dwelt so long upon this point of
versification, unless we had conceived it to be one
distinguishing excellence of Mr. Coleridge’s
poetry, and very closely connected with another, namely,
fulness and individuality of thought. It seems
to be a fact, although we do not pretend to explain
it, that condensation of meaning is generally found
in poetry of a high import in proportion to perfection
in metrical harmony. Petrarch, Spenser, Shakespeare,
and Milton are obvious instances. Goethe and
Coleridge are almost equally so. Indeed, whether
in verse, or prose, or conversation, Mr. Coleridge’s
mind may be fitly characterized as an energetic mind—­a
mind always at work, always in a course of reasoning.
He cares little for anything, merely because it was
or is; it must be referred, or be capable of being
referred, to some law or principle, in order to attract
his attention. This is not from ignorance of
the facts of natural history or science. His written
and published works alone sufficiently show how constantly
and accurately he has been in the habit of noting
all the phenomena of the material world around us;
and the great philosophical system now at length in
preparation for the press demonstrates, we are told,
his masterly acquaintance with almost all the sciences,
and with not a few of the higher and more genial of
the arts. Yet his vast acquirements of this sort
are never put forward by or for themselves; it is in
his apt and novel illustrations, his indications of
analogies, his explanation of anomalies, that he enables
the hearer or reader to get a glimpse of the extent
of his practical knowledge. He is always reasoning
out from an inner point, and it is the inner point,
the principle, the law which he labours to bring forward
into light. If he can convince you or himself
of the principle a priori, he generally leaves
the facts to take care of themselves. He leads
us into the laboratories of art or nature as a showman
guides you through a caravan crusted with spar and
stalactites, all cold, and dim, and motionless, till
he lifts his torch aloft, and on a sudden you gaze
in admiration on walls and roof of flaming crystals
and stars of eternal diamond.

All this, whether for praise or for blame, is perceptible
enough in Mr. Coleridge’s verse, but perceptible,
of course, in such degree and mode as the law of poetry
in general, and the nature of the specific poem in
particular, may require. But the main result from
this frame and habit of his mind is very distinctly
traceable in the uniform subjectivity of almost all
his works. He does not belong to that grand division
of poetry and poets which corresponds with painting
and painters; or which Pindar and Dante are the chief;—­those
masters of the picturesque, who, by a felicity inborn,
view and present everything in the completeness of
actual objectivity—­and who have a class
derived from and congenial with them, presenting few
pictures indeed, but always full of picturesque matter;

Page 153

of which secondary class Spenser and Southey may be
mentioned as eminent instances. To neither of
these does Mr. Coleridge belong; in his “Christabel,”
there certainly are several distinct pictures
of great beauty; but he, as a poet, clearly comes within
the other division which answers to music and the
musician, in which you have a magnificent mirage of
words with the subjective associations of the poet
curling, and twisting, and creeping round, and through,
and above every part of it. This is the class
to which Milton belongs, in whose poems we have heard
Mr. Coleridge say that he remembered but two proper
pictures—­Adam bending over the sleeping
Eve at the beginning of the fifth book of the “Paradise
Lost,” and Delilah approaching Samson towards
the end of the “Agonistes.” But when
we point out the intense personal feeling, the self-projection,
as it were, which characterizes Mr. Coleridge’s
poems, we mean that such feeling is the soul and spirit,
not the whole body and form, of his poetry. For
surely no one has ever more earnestly and constantly
borne in mind the maxim of Milton, that poetry ought
to be simple, sensuous, and impassioned.
The poems in these volumes are no authority for that
dreamy, half-swooning style of verse which was criticized
by Lord Byron (in language too strong for print) as
the fatal sin of Mr. John Keats, and which, unless
abjured betimes, must prove fatal to several younger
aspirants—­male and female—­ who
for the moment enjoy some popularity. The poetry
before us is distinct and clear, and accurate in its
imagery; but the imagery is rarely or never exhibited
for description’s sake alone; it is rarely or
never exclusively objective; that is to say, put forward
as a spectacle, a picture on which the mind’s
eye is to rest and terminate. You may if your
sight is short, or your imagination cold, regard the
imagery in itself and go no farther; but the poet’s
intention is that you should feel and imagine a great
deal more than you see. His aim is to awaken in
the reader the same mood of mind, the same cast of
imagination and fancy whence issued the associations
which animate and enlighten his pictures. You
must think with him, must sympathize with him, must
suffer yourself to be lifted out of your own school
of opinion or faith, and fall back upon your own consciousness,
an unsophisticated man. If you decline this,
non tibi spirat. From his earliest youth
to this day, Mr. Coleridge’s poetry has been
a faithful mirror reflecting the images of his mind.
Hence he is so original, so individual. With a
little trouble, the zealous reader of the “Biographia
Literaria” may trace in these volumes the whole
course of mental struggle and self-evolvement narrated
in that odd but interesting work; but he will see the
track marked in light; the notions become images,
the images glorified, and not unfrequently the abstruse
position stamped clearer by the poet than by the psychologist.
No student of Coleridge’s philosophy can fully
understand it without a perusal of the illumining,
and if we may so say, popularizing commentary
of his poetry. It is the Greek put into the vulgar
tongue. And we must say, it is somewhat strange
to hear any one condemn those philosophical principles
as altogether unintelligible, which are inextricably
interwoven in every page of a volume of poetry which
he professes to admire....

Page 154

To this habit of intellectual introversion we are
very much inclined to attribute Mr. Coleridge’s
never having seriously undertaken a great heroic poem.
The “Paradise Lost” may be thought to stand
in the way of our laying down any general rule on
the subject; yet that poem is as peculiar as Milton
himself, and does not materially affect our opinion,
that the pure epic can hardly be achieved by the poet
in whose mind the reflecting turn greatly predominates.
The extent of the action in such a poem requires a
free and fluent stream of narrative verse; description,
purely objective, must fill a large space in it, and
its permanent success depends on a rapidity, or at
least a liveliness, of movement which is scarcely
compatible with much of what Bacon calls inwardness
of meaning. The reader’s attention could
not be preserved; his journey being long, he expects
his road to be smooth and unembarrassed. The
condensed passion of the ode is out of place in heroic
song. Few persons will dispute that the two great
Homeric poems are the most delightful of epics; they
may not have the sublimity of the “Paradise
Lost,” nor the picturesqueness of the “Divine
Comedy,” nor the etherial brilliancy of the
“Orlando”; but, dead as they are in language,
metre, accent,—­obsolete in religion, manners,
costume, and country,—­ they nevertheless
even now please all those who can read them
beyond all other narrative poems. There is a
salt in them which keeps them sweet and incorruptible
throughout every change. They are the most popular
of all the remains of ancient genius, and translations
of them for the twentieth time are amongst the very
latest productions of our contemporary literature.
From beginning to end, these marvellous poems are
exclusively objective; everything is in them, except
the poet himself. It is not to Vico or Wolfe
that we refer, when we say that Homer is vox
et praeterea nihil; as musical as the nightingale,
and as invisible....

The “Remorse” and “Zapolya”
strikingly illustrate the predominance of the meditative,
pausing habit of Mr. Coleridge’s mind. The
first of these beautiful dramas was acted with success,
although worse acting was never seen. Indeed,
Kelly’s sweet music was the only part of the
theatrical apparatus in any respect worthy of the play.
The late Mr. Kean made some progress in the study
of Ordonio, with a view of reproducing the piece;
and we think that Mr. Macready, either as Ordonio
or Alvar, might, with some attention to music, costume,
and scenery, make the representation attractive even
in the present day. But in truth, taken absolutely
and in itself, the “Remorse” is more fitted
for the study than the stage; its character is romantic
and pastoral in a high degree, and there is a profusion
of poetry in the minor parts, the effect of which
could never be preserved in the common routine of
representation. What this play wants is dramatic
movement; there is energetic dialogue and a crisis

Page 155

of great interest, but the action does not sufficiently
grow on the stage itself. Perhaps, also, the purpose
of Alvar to waken remorse in Ordonio’s mind
is put forward too prominently, and has too much the
look of a mere moral experiment to be probable under
the circumstances in which the brothers stand to each
other. Nevertheless, there is a calmness as well
as superiority of intellect in Alvar which seem to
justify, in some measure, the sort of attempt on his
part, which, in fact, constitutes the theme of the
play; and it must be admitted that the whole underplot
of Isidore and Alhadra is lively and affecting in
the highest degree. We particularly refer to the
last scene between Ordonio and Isidore in the cavern,
which we think genuine Shakespeare; and Alhadra’s
narrative of her discovery of her husband’s
murder is not surpassed in truth and force by anything
of the kind that we know....

We have not yet referred to the “Ancient Mariner,”
“Christabel,” the “Odes on France,”
and the “Departing Year,” or the “Love
Poems.” All these are well known by those
who know no other parts of Coleridge’s poetry,
and the length of our preceding remarks compels us
to be brief in our notice. Mrs. Barbauld, meaning
to be complimentary, told our poet, that she thought
the “Ancient Mariner” very beautiful, but
that it had the fault of containing no moral.
“Nay, madam,” replied the poet, “if
I may be permitted to say so, the only fault in the
poem is that there is too much In a work of
such pure imagination I ought not to have stopped
to give reasons for things, or inculcate humanity to
beasts. ‘The Arabian Nights’ might
have taught me better.” They might—­
the tale of the merchant’s son who puts out the
eyes of a genii by flinging his date-shells down a
well, and is therefore ordered to prepare for death—­might
have taught this law of imagination; but the fault
is small indeed; and the “Ancient Mariner”
is, and will ever be, one of the most perfect pieces
of imaginative poetry, not only in our language, but
in the literature of all Europe. We have, certainly,
sometimes doubted whether the miraculous destruction
of the vessel in the presence of the pilot and hermit,
was not an error, in respect of its bringing the purely
preternatural into too close contact with the actual
frame-work of the poem. The only link between
those scenes of out-of-the-world wonders, and the
wedding guest, should, we rather suspect, have been
the blasted, unknown being himself who described them.
There should have been no other witnesses of the truth
of any part of the tale, but the “Ancient Mariner”
himself. This is by the way: but take the
work altogether, there is nothing else like it; it
is a poem by itself; between it and other compositions,
in pari materia, there is a chasm which you
cannot overpass; the sensitive reader feels himself
insulated, and a sea of wonder and mystery flows round
him as round the spell-stricken ship itself.
It was a sad mistake in the ablest artist—­

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Mr. Scott, we believe—­who in his engravings
has made the ancient mariner an old decrepit man.
That is not the true image; no! he should have been
a growthless, decayless being, impassive to time or
season, a silent cloud—­the wandering Jew.
The curse of the dead men’s eyes should not
have passed away. But this was, perhaps, too much
for any pencil, even if the artist had fully entered
into the poet’s idea. Indeed, it is no
subject for painting. The “Ancient Mariner”
displays Mr. Coleridge’s peculiar mastery over
the wild and preternatural in a brilliant manner;
but in his next poem, “Christabel,” the
exercise of his power in this line is still more skilful
and singular. The thing attempted in “Christabel”
is the most difficult of execution in the whole field
of romance—­witchery by daylight; and the
success is complete. Geraldine, so far as she
goes, is perfect. She is sui generis.
The reader feels the same terror and perplexity that
Christabel in vain struggles to express, and the same
spell that fascinates her eyes. Who and what is
Geraldine—­whence come, whither going, and
what designing? What did the poet mean to make
of her? What could he have made of her? Could
he have gone on much farther without having had recourse
to some of the ordinary shifts of witch tales?
Was she really the daughter of Roland de Vaux, and
would the friends have met again and embraced?...

We are not amongst those who wish to have “Christabel”
finished. It cannot be finished. The poet
has spun all he could without snapping. The theme
is too fine and subtle to bear much extension.
It is better as it is, imperfect as a story, but complete
as an exquisite production of the imagination, differing
in form and colour from the “Ancient Mariner,”
yet differing in effect from it only so as the same
powerful faculty is directed to the feudal or the
mundane phases of the preternatural....

It has been impossible to express, in the few pages
to which we are necessarily limited, even a brief
opinion upon all those pieces which might seem to
call for notice in an estimate of this author’s
poetical genius. We know no writer of modern
times whom it would not be easier to characterize
in one page than Coleridge in two. The volumes
before us contain so many integral efforts of imagination,
that a distinct notice of each is indispensable, if
we would form a just conclusion upon the total powers
of the man. Wordsworth, Scott, Moore, Byron, Southey,
are incomparably more uniform in the direction of
their poetic mind. But if you look over these
volumes for indications of their author’s poetic
powers, you find him appearing in at least half a dozen
shapes, so different from each other, that it is in
vain to attempt to mass them together. It cannot
indeed be said, that he has ever composed what is
popularly termed a great poem; but he is great
in several lines, and the union of such powers is
an essential term in a fair estimate of his genius.

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The romantic witchery of the “Christabel,”
and “Ancient Mariner,” the subtle passion
of the love-strains, the lyrical splendour of the
three great odes, the affectionate dignity, thoughtfulness,
and delicacy of the blank verse poems—­especially
the “Lover’s Resolution,” “Frost
at Midnight,” and that most noble and interesting
“Address to Mr. Wordsworth”—­the
dramas, the satires, the epigrams—­these
are so distinct and so whole in themselves, that they
might seem to proceed from different authors, were
it not for that same individualizing power, that “shaping
spirit of imagination” which more or less sensibly
runs through them all. It is the predominance
of this power, which, in our judgment, constitutes
the essential difference between Coleridge and any
other of his great contemporaries. He is the most
imaginative of the English poets since Milton.
Whatever he writes, be it on the most trivial subject,
be it in the most simple strain, his imagination, in
spite of himself, affects it. There never
was a better illustrator of the dogma of the Schoolmen—­in
omnem actum intellectualem imaginatio influit.
We believe we might affirm, that throughout all the
mature original poems in these volumes, there is not
one image, the expression of which does not,
in a greater or less degree, individualize it and
appropriate it to the poet’s feelings. Tear
the passage out of its place, and nail it down at
the head of a chapter of a modern novel, and it will
be like hanging up in a London exhibition-room a picture
painted for the dim light of a cathedral. Sometimes
a single word—­an epithet—­has
the effect to the reader of a Claude Lorraine glass;
it tints without obscuring or disguising the object.
The poet has the same power in conversation.
We remember him once settling an elaborate discussion
carried on in his presence, upon the respective sublimity
of Shakespeare and Schiller in Othello and the Robbers,
by saying, “Both are sublime; only Schiller’s
is the material sublime—­ that’s
all!” All to be sure; but more than enough
to show the whole difference. And upon another
occasion, where the doctrine of the Sacramentaries
and the Roman Catholics on the subject of the Eucharist
was in question, the poet said, “They are both
equally wrong; the first have volatilized the Eucharist
into a metaphor—­the last have condensed
it into an idol.” Such utterance as this
flashes light; it supersedes all argument—­it
abolishes proof by proving itself.

We speak of Coleridge, then, as the poet of imagination;
and we add, that he is likewise the poet of thought
and verbal harmony. That his thoughts are sometimes
hard and sometimes even obscure, we think must be
admitted; it is an obscurity of which all very subtle
thinkers are occasionally guilty, either by attempting
to express evanescent feelings for which human language
is an inadequate vehicle, or by expressing, however
adequately, thoughts and distinctions to which the

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common reader is unused. As to the first kind
of obscurity, the words serving only as hieroglyphics
to denote a once existing state of mind in the poet,
but not logically inferring what that state was, the
reader can only guess for himself by the context,
whether he ever has or not experienced in himself
a corresponding feeling; and, therefore, undoubtedly
this is an obscurity which strict criticism cannot
but condemn. But, if an author be obscure, merely
because this or that reader is unaccustomed to the
mode or direction of thinking in which such author’s
genius makes him take delight—­such a writer
must indeed bear the consequence as to immediate popularity;
but he cannot help the consequence, and if he be worth
anything for posterity, he will disregard it.
In this sense almost every great writer, whose natural
bent has been to turn the mind upon itself, is—­must
be—­obscure; for no writer, with such a direction
of intellect, will be great, unless he is individual
and original; and if he is individual and original,
then he must, in most cases, himself make the readers
who shall be competent to sympathize with him.

The English flatter themselves by a pretence that
Shakespeare and Milton are popular in England.
It is good taste, indeed, to wish to have it believed
that those poets are popular. Their names are
so; but if it be said that the works of Shakespeare
and Milton are popular—­that is, liked and
studied—­amongst the wide circle whom it
is now the fashion to talk of as enlightened, we are
obliged to express our doubts whether a grosser delusion
was ever promulgated. Not a play of Shakespeare’s
can be ventured on the London stage without mutilation—­and
without the most revolting balderdash foisted into
the rents made by managers in his divine dramas; nay,
it is only some three or four of his pieces that can
be borne at all by our all-intelligent public, unless
the burthen be lightened by dancing, singing, or processioning.
This for the stage. But is it otherwise with
“the reading public”? We believe
it is worse; we think, verily, that the apprentice
or his master who sits out Othello or Richard at the
theatres, does get a sort of glimpse, a touch, an
atmosphere of intellectual grandeur; but he could not
keep himself awake during the perusal of that which
he admires—­or fancies he admires—­in
scenic representation. As to understanding Shakespeare—­as
to entering into all Shakespeare’s thoughts
and feelings—­as to seeing the idea of Hamlet,
or Lear, or Othello, as Shakespeare saw it—­this
we believe falls, and can only fall, to the lot of
the really cultivated few, and of those who may have
so much of the temperament of genius in themselves,
as to comprehend and sympathize with the criticism
of men of genius. Shakespeare is now popular
by name, because, in the first place, great men, more
on a level with the rest of mankind, have said that
he is admirable, and also because, in the absolute
universality of his genius, he has presented points
to all. Every man, woman, and child, may pick
at least one flower from his garden, the name and scent
of which are familiar. To all which must of course
be added, the effect of theatrical representation,
be that representation what it may. There are
tens of thousands of persons in this country whose
only acquaintance with Shakespeare, such as it is,
is through the stage.

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We have been talking of the contemporary mass; but
this is not all; a great original writer of a philosophic
turn—­especially a poet—­will
almost always have the fashionable world also against
him at first, because he does not give the sort of
pleasure expected of him at the time, and because,
not contented with that, he is sure, by precept or
example, to show a contempt for the taste and judgment
of the expectants. He is always, and by the law
of his being, an idoloclast. By and by, after
years of abuse or neglect, the aggregate of the single
minds who think for themselves, and have seen the truth
and force of his genius, becomes important; the merits
of the poet by degrees constitute a question for discussion;
his works are one by one read; men recognize a superiority
in the abstract, and learn to be modest where before
they had been scornful; the coterie becomes a sect;
the sect dilates into a party; and lo! after a season,
no one knows how, the poet’s fame is universal.
All this, to the very life, has taken place in this
country within the last twenty years. The noblest
philosophical poem since the time of Lucretius was,
within time of short memory, declared to be intolerable,
by one of the most brilliant writers in one of the
most brilliant publications of the day. It always
puts us in mind of Waller—­ no mean parallel—­who,
upon the coming out of the “Paradise Lost,”
wrote to the duke of Buckingham, amongst other pretty
things, as follows:—­ “Milton, the
old blind schoolmaster, has lately written a poem on
the Fall of Man—­remarkable for nothing
but its extreme length!” Our divine poet
asked a fit audience, although it should be but few.
His prayer was heard; a fit audience for the “Paradise
Lost” has ever been, and at this moment must
be, a small one, and we cannot affect to believe that
it is destined to be much increased by what is called
the march of intellect.

Can we lay down the pen without remembering that Coleridge
the poet is but half the name of Coleridge? This,
however, is not the place, nor the time, to discuss
in detail his qualities or his exertions as a psychologist,
moralist, and general philosopher. That time may
come, when his system, as a whole, shall be fairly
placed before the world, as we have reason to hope
it will soon be; and when the preliminary works—­
the “Friend,” the “Lay Sermons,”
the “Aids to Reflection,” and the “Church
and State,”—­especially the last two—­shall
be seen in their proper relations as preparatory exercises
for the reader. His “Church and State,
according to the Idea of Each”—­a little
book—­we cannot help recommending as a storehouse
of grand and immovable principles, bearing upon some
of the most vehemently disputed topics of constitutional
interest in these momentous times. Assuredly this
period has not produced a profounder and more luminous
essay. We have heard it asked, what was the proposed
object of Mr. Coleridge’s labours as a metaphysical
philosopher? He once answered that question himself,
in language never to be forgotten by those who heard
it, and which, whatever may be conjectured of the
probability or even possibility of its being fully
realized, must be allowed to express the completest
idea of a system of philosophy ever yet made public.

Page 160

“My system,” said he, “if I may
venture to give it so fine a name, is the only attempt
that I know, ever made, to reduce all knowledge into
harmony. It opposes no other system, but shows
what was true in each; and how that which was true
in the particular in each of them, became error, because
it was only half the truth. I have endeavoured
to unite the insulated fragments of truth, and therewith
to frame a perfect mirror. I show to each system
that I fully understand and rightfully appreciate
what that system means; but then I lift up that system
to a higher point of view, from which I enable it
to see its former position, where it was indeed, but
under another light and with different relations,—­so
that the fragment of truth is not only acknowledged,
but explained. So the old astronomers discovered
and maintained much that was true; but because they
were placed on a false ground, and looked from a wrong
point of view, they never did—­they never
could—­discover the truth—­that
is, the whole truth. As soon as they left the
earth, their false centre, and took their stand in
the sun, immediately they saw the whole system in
its true light, and the former station remaining—­but
remaining as a part of the prospect. I
wish, in short, to connect a moral copula, natural
history with political history; or, in other words,
to make history scientific, and science historical:—­to
take from history its accidentality, and from science
its fatalism.”

Whether we shall ever, hereafter, have occasion to
advert to any new poetical efforts of Mr. Coleridge,
or not, we cannot say. We wish we had a reasonable
cause to expect it. If not, then this hail and
farewell will have been well made. We conclude
with, we believe, the last verses he has written—­

My Baptismal Birth-Day.

God’s child in Christ adopted,—­Christ
my all,—­
What that earth boasts were not lost cheaply,
rather
Than forfeit the blest name, by which
I call
The Holy One, the Almighty God, my Father?
Father! in Christ we live, and Christ
in Thee;
Eternal Thou, and everlasting we.
The heir of heaven, henceforth I fear
not death:
In Christ I live: in Christ I draw
the breath
Of the true life:—­Let then
earth, sea, and sky
Make war against me! On my heart
I show
Their mighty Master’s seal.
In vain they try
To end my life, that can but end its woe.
Is that a death-bed where a Christian
lies?
Yes! but not his—­’tis
Death itself there dies.—­Vol. ii, p. 151.

SIR WALTER SCOTT ON JANE AUSTEN

[From. The Quarterly Review, October, 1815]

Emma; a Novel. By the Author of Sense
and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, etc.
3 vols. 12mo. London. 1815.

Page 161

There are some vices in civilized society so common
that they are hardly acknowledged as stains upon the
moral character, the propensity to which is nevertheless
carefully concealed, even by those who most frequently
give way to them; since no man of pleasure would willingly
assume the gross epithet of a debauchee or a drunkard.
One would almost think that novel-reading fell under
this class of frailties, since among the crowds who
read little else, it is not common to find an individual
of hardihood sufficient to avow his taste for these
frivolous studies. A novel, therefore, is frequently
“bread eaten in secret”; and it is not
upon Lydia Languish’s toilet alone that Tom Jones
and Peregrine Pickle are to be found ambushed behind
works of a more grave and instructive character.
And hence it has happened, that in no branch of composition,
not even in poetry itself, have so many writers, and
of such varied talents, exerted their powers.
It may perhaps be added, that although the composition
of these works admits of being exalted and decorated
by the higher exertions of genius; yet such is the
universal charm of narrative, that the worst novel
ever written will find some gentle reader content
to yawn over it, rather than to open the page of the
historian, moralist, or poet. We have heard, indeed,
of one work of fiction so unutterably stupid, that
the proprietor, diverted by the rarity of the incident,
offered the book, which consisted of two volumes in
duodecimo, handsomely bound, to any person who would
declare, upon his honour, that he had read the whole
from beginning to end. But although this offer
was made to the passengers on board an Indiaman, during
a tedious outward-bound voyage, the Memoirs of Clegg
the Clergyman (such was the title of this unhappy
composition) completely baffled the most dull and
determined student on board, and bid fair for an exception
to the general rule above-mentioned,—­when
the love of glory prevailed with the boatswain, a
man of strong and solid parts, to hazard the attempt,
and he actually conquered and carried off the prize!

The judicious reader will see at once that we have
been pleading our own cause while stating the universal
practice, and preparing him for a display of more
general acquaintance with this fascinating department
of literature, than at first sight may seem consistent
with the graver studies to which we are compelled
by duty: but in truth, when we consider how many
hours of languor and anxiety, of deserted age and
solitary celibacy, of pain even and poverty, are beguiled
by the perusal of these light volumes, we cannot austerely
condemn the source from which is drawn the alleviation
of such a portion of human misery, or consider the
regulation of this department as beneath the sober
consideration of the critic.

Page 162

If such apologies may be admitted in judging the labours
of ordinary novelists, it becomes doubly the duty
of the critic to treat with kindness as well as candour
works which, like this before us, proclaim a knowledge
of the human heart, with the power and resolution to
bring that knowledge to the service of honour and
virtue. The author is already known to the public
by the two novels announced in her title-page, and
both, the last especially, attracted, with justice,
an attention from the public far superior to what
is granted to the ephemeral productions which supply
the regular demand of watering-places and circulating
libraries. They belong to a class of fictions
which has arisen almost in our own times, and which
draws the characters and incidents introduced more
immediately from the current of ordinary life than
was permitted by the former rules of the novel.
In its first appearance, the novel was the legitimate
child of the romance; and though the manners and general
turn of the composition were altered so as to suit
modern times, the author remained fettered by many
peculiarities derived from the original style of romantic
fiction. These may be chiefly traced in the conduct
of the narrative, and the tone of sentiment attributed
to the fictitious personages. On the first point,
although

The talisman and
magic wand were broke,
Knights, dwarfs, and genii vanish’d
into smoke,

still the reader expected to peruse a course of adventures
of a nature more interesting and extraordinary than
those which occur in his own life, or that of his
next-door neighbours.

The hero no longer defeated armies by his single sword,
clove giants to the chine, or gained kingdoms.
But he was expected to go through perils by sea and
land, to be steeped in poverty, to be tried by temptation,
to be exposed to the alternate vicissitudes of adversity
and prosperity, and his life was a troubled scene
of suffering and achievement. Few novelists,
indeed, adventured to deny to the hero his final hour
of tranquillity and happiness, though it was the prevailing
fashion never to relieve him out of his last and most
dreadful distress until the finishing chapters of
his history; so that although his prosperity in the
record of his life was short, we were bound to believe
it was long and uninterrupted when the author had
done with him. The heroine was usually condemned
to equal hardships and hazards. She was regularly
exposed to being forcibly carried off like a Sabine
virgin by some frantic admirer. And even if she
escaped the terrors of masked ruffians, an insidious
ravisher, a cloak wrapped forcibly around her head,
and a coach with the blinds up driving she could not
conjecture whither, she had still her share of wandering,
of poverty, of obloquy, of seclusion, and of imprisonment,
and was frequently extended upon a bed of sickness,
and reduced to her last shilling before the author
condescended to shield her from persecution.

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In all these dread contingencies the mind of the reader
was expected to sympathize, since by incidents so much
beyond the bounds of his ordinary experience, his wonder
and interest ought at once to be excited. But
gradually he became familiar with the land of fiction,
the adventures of which he assimilated not with those
of real life, but with each other. Let the distress
of the hero or heroine be ever so great, the reader
reposed an imperturbable confidence in the talents
of the author, who, as he had plunged them into distress,
would in his own good time, and when things, as Tony
Lumkin says, were in a concatenation accordingly,
bring his favourites out of all their troubles.
Mr. Crabbe has expressed his own and our feelings excellently
on this subject.

For should we grant these beauties all
endure
Severest pangs, they’ve still the
speediest cure;
Before one charm be withered from the
face,
Except the bloom which shall again have
place,
In wedlock ends each wish, in triumph
all disgrace.
And life to come, we fairly may suppose,
One light bright contrast to these wild
dark woes.

In short, the author of novels was, in former times,
expected to tread pretty much in the limits between
the concentric circles of probability and possibility;
and as he was not permitted to transgress the latter,
his narrative, to make amends, almost always went beyond
the bounds of the former. Now, although it may
be urged that the vicissitudes of human life have
occasionally led an individual through as many scenes
of singular fortune as are represented in the most
extravagant of these fictions, still the causes and
personages acting on these changes have varied with
the progress of the adventurer’s fortune, and
do not present that combined plot, (the object of
every skilful novelist), in which all the more interesting
individuals of the dramatis personae have their appropriate
share in the action and in bringing about the catastrophe.
Here, even more than in its various and violent changes
of fortune, rests the improbability of the novel.
The life of man rolls forth like a stream from the
fountain, or it spreads out into tranquillity like
a placid or stagnant lake. In the latter case,
the individual grows old among the characters with
whom he was born, and is contemporary,—­shares
precisely the sort of weal and woe to which his birth
destined him,—­ moves in the same circle,—­and,
allowing for the change of seasons, is influenced
by, and influences the same class of persons by which
he was originally surrounded. The man of mark
and of adventure, on the contrary, resembles, in the
course of his life, the river whose mid-current and
discharge into the ocean are widely removed from each
other, as well as from the rocks and wild flowers which
its fountains first reflected; violent changes of
time, of place, and of circumstances, hurry him forward
from one scene to another, and his adventures will
usually be found only connected with each other because

Page 164

they have happened to the same individual. Such
a history resembles an ingenious, fictitious narrative,
exactly in the degree in which an old dramatic chronicle
of the life and death of some distinguished character,
where all the various agents appear and disappear
as in the page of history, approaches a regular drama,
in which every person introduced plays an appropriate
part, and every point of the action tends to one common
catastrophe.

We return to the second broad line of distinction
between the novel, as formerly composed, and real
life,—­the difference, namely, of the sentiments.
The novelist professed to give an imitation of nature,
but it was, as the French say, la belle nature.
Human beings, indeed, were presented, but in the most
sentimental mood, and with minds purified by a sensibility
which often verged on extravagance. In the serious
class of novels, the hero was usually

A knight of love, who never broke a vow.

And although, in those of a more humorous cast, he
was permitted a licence, borrowed either from real
life or from the libertinism of the drama, still a
distinction was demanded even from Peregrine Pickle,
or Tom Jones; and the hero, in every folly of which
he might be guilty, was studiously vindicated from
the charge of infidelity of the heart. The heroine
was, of course, still more immaculate; and to have
conferred her affections upon any other than the lover
to whom the reader had destined her from their first
meeting, would have been a crime against sentiment
which no author, of moderate prudence, would have hazarded,
under the old regime.

Here, therefore, we have two essentials and important
circumstances, in which the earlier novels differed
from those now in fashion, and were more nearly assimilated
to the old romances. And there can be no doubt
that, by the studied involution and extrication of
the story, by the combination of incidents new, striking
and wonderful beyond the course of ordinary life,
the former authors opened that obvious and strong
sense of interest which arises from curiosity; as by
the pure, elevated, and romantic cast of the sentiment,
they conciliated those better propensities of our
nature which loves to contemplate the picture of virtue,
even when confessedly unable to imitate its excellences.

But strong and powerful as these sources of emotion
and interest may be, they are, like all others, capable
of being exhausted by habit. The imitators who
rushed in crowds upon each path in which the great
masters of the art had successively led the way, produced
upon the public mind the usual effect of satiety.
The first writer of a new class is, as it were, placed
on a pinnacle of excellence, to which, at the earliest
glance of a surprised admirer, his ascent seems little
less than miraculous. Time and imitation speedily
diminish the wonder, and each successive attempt establishes
a kind of progressive scale of ascent between the
lately deified author, and the reader, who had deemed
his excellence inaccessible. The stupidity, the
mediocrity, the merit of his imitators, are alike
fatal to the first inventor, by showing how possible
it is to exaggerate his faults and to come within a
certain point of his beauties.

Page 165

Materials also (and the man of genius as well as his
wretched imitator must work with the same) become
stale and familiar. Social life, in our civilized
days, affords few instances capable of being painted
in the strong dark colours which excite surprise and
horror; and robbers, smugglers, bailiffs, caverns,
dungeons, and mad-houses, have been all introduced
until they ceased to interest. And thus in the
novel, as in every style of composition which appeals
to the public taste, the more rich and easily worked
mines being exhausted, the adventurous author must,
if he is desirous of success, have recourse to those
which were disdained by his predecessors as unproductive,
or avoided as only capable of being turned to profit
by great skill and labour.

Accordingly a style of novel has arisen, within the
last fifteen or twenty years, differing from the former
in the points upon which the interest hinges; neither
alarming our credulity nor amusing our imagination
by wild variety of incident, or by those pictures of
romantic affection and sensibility, which were formerly
as certain attributes of fictitious characters as
they are of rare occurrence among those who actually
live and die. The substitute for these excitements,
which had lost much of their poignancy by the repeated
and injudicious use of them, was the art of copying
from nature as she really exists in the common walks
of life, and presenting to the reader, instead of the
splendid scenes of an imaginary world, a correct and
striking representation of that which is daily taking
place around him.

In adventuring upon this task, the author makes obvious
sacrifices, and encounters peculiar difficulty.
He who paints from le beau ideal, if his scenes
and sentiments are striking and interesting, is in
a great measure exempted from the difficult task of
reconciling them with the ordinary probabilities of
life: but he who paints a scene of common occurrence,
places his composition within that extensive range
of criticism which general experience offers to every
reader. The resemblance of a statue of Hercules
we must take on the artist’s judgment; but every
one can criticize that which is presented as the portrait
of a friend, or neighbour. Something more than
a mere sign-post likeness is also demanded. The
portrait must have spirit and character, as well as
resemblance; and being deprived of all that, according
to Bayes, goes “to elevate and surprize,”
it must make amends by displaying depth of knowledge
and dexterity of execution. We, therefore, bestow
no mean compliment upon the author of Emma,
when we say that, keeping close to common incidents,
and to such characters as occupy the ordinary walks
of life, she has produced sketches of such spirit and
originality, that we never miss the excitation which
depends upon a narrative of uncommon events, arising
from the consideration of minds, manners and sentiments,
greatly above our own. In this class she stands

Page 166

almost alone; for the scenes of Miss Edgeworth are
laid in higher life, varied by more romantic incident,
and by her remarkable power of embodying and illustrating
national character. But the author of Emma
confines herself chiefly to the middling classes of
society; her most distinguished characters do not
rise greatly above well-bred country gentlemen and
ladies; and those which are sketched with most originality
and precision, belong to a class rather below that
standard. The narrative of all her novels is
composed of such common occurrences as may have fallen
under the observation of most folks; and her dramatis
personae conduct themselves upon the motives and principles
which the readers may recognize as ruling their own
and that of most of their acquaintances. The
kind of moral, also, which these novels inculcate,
applies equally to the paths of common life, as will
best appear from a short notice of the author’s
former works, with a more full abstract of that which
we at present have under consideration.

Sense and Sensibility, the first of these compositions,
contains the history of two sisters. The elder,
a young lady of prudence and regulated feelings, becomes
gradually attached to a man of an excellent heart
and limited talents, who happens unfortunately to be
fettered by a rash and ill-assorted engagement.
In the younger sister, the influence of sensibility
and imagination predominates; and she, as was to be
expected, also falls in love, but with more unbridled
and wilful passion. Her lover, gifted with all
the qualities of exterior polish and vivacity, proves
faithless, and marries a woman of large fortune.
The interest and merit of the piece depend altogether
upon the behaviour of the elder sister, while obliged
at once to sustain her own disappointment with fortitude,
and to support her sister, who abandons herself, with
unsuppressed feelings, to the indulgence of grief.
The marriage of the unworthy rival at length relieves
her own lover from his imprudent engagement, while
her sister, turned wise by precept, example, and experience,
transfers her affection to a very respectable and
somewhat too serious admirer, who had nourished an
unsuccessful passion through the three volumes.

In Pride and Prejudice the author presents
us with a family of young women, bred up under a foolish
and vulgar mother, and a father whose good abilities
lay hid under such a load of indolence and insensibility,
that he had become contented to make the foibles and
follies of his wife and daughters the subject of dry
and humorous sarcasm, rather than of admonition, or
restraint. This is one of the portraits from ordinary
life which shews our author’s talents in a very
strong point of view. A friend of ours, whom
the author never saw or heard of, was at once recognized
by his own family as the original of Mr. Bennet, and
we do not know if he has yet got rid of the nickname.
A Mr. Collins, too, a formal, conceited, yet servile

Page 167

young sprig of divinity, is drawn with the same force
and precision. The story of the piece consists
chiefly in the fates of the second sister, to whom
a man of high birth, large fortune, but haughty and
reserved manners, becomes attached, in spite of the
discredit thrown upon the object of his affection by
the vulgarity and ill-conduct of her relations.
The lady, on the contrary, hurt at the contempt of
her connections, which the lover does not even attempt
to suppress, and prejudiced against him on other accounts,
refuses the hand which he ungraciously offers, and
does not perceive that she has done a foolish thing
until she accidentally visits a very handsome seat
and grounds belonging to her admirer. They chance
to meet exactly as her prudence had begun to subdue
her prejudice; and after some essential services rendered
to her family, the lover becomes encouraged to renew
his addresses, and the novel ends happily.

Emma has even less story than either of the
preceding novels. Miss Emma Woodhouse, from whom
the book takes its name, is the daughter of a gentleman
of wealth and consequence residing at his seat in the
immediate vicinage of a country village called Highbury.
The father, a good-natured, silly valetudinary, abandons
the management of his household to Emma, he himself
being only occupied by his summer and winter walk,
his apothecary, his gruel, and his whist table.
The latter is supplied from the neighbouring village
of Highbury with precisely the sort of persons who
occupy the vacant corners of a regular whist table,
when a village is in the neighbourhood, and better
cannot be found within the family. We have the
smiling and courteous vicar, who nourishes the ambitious
hope of obtaining Miss Woodhouse’s hand.
We have Mrs. Bates, the wife of a former rector, past
everything but tea and whist; her daughter, Miss Bates,
a good-natured, vulgar, and foolish old maid; Mr.
Weston, a gentleman of a frank disposition and moderate
fortune, in the vicinity, and his wife an amiable and
accomplished person, who had been Emma’s governess,
and is devotedly attached to her. Amongst all
these personages, Miss Woodhouse walks forth, the princess
paramount, superior to all her companions in wit, beauty,
fortune, and accomplishments, doated upon by her father
and the Westons, admired, and almost worshipped by
the more humble companions of the whist table.
The object of most young ladies is, or at least is
usually supposed to be, a desirable connection in
marriage. But Emma Woodhouse, either anticipating
the taste of a later period of life, or, like a good
sovereign, preferring the weal of her subjects of Highbury
to her own private interest, sets generously about
making matches for her friends without thinking of
matrimony on her own account. We are informed
that she had been eminently successful in the case
of Mr. and Mrs. Weston; and when the novel commences
she is exerting her influence in favour of Miss Harriet
Smith, a boarding-school girl without family or fortune,
very good humoured, very pretty, very silly, and, what
suited Miss Woodhouse’s purpose best of all,
very much disposed to be married.

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In these conjugal machinations Emma is frequently
interrupted, not only by the cautions of her father,
who had a particular objection to any body committing
the rash act of matrimony, but also by the sturdy
reproof and remonstrances of Mr. Knightley, the elder
brother of her sister’s husband, a sensible
country gentleman of thirty-five, who had known Emma
from her cradle, and was the only person who ventured
to find fault with her. In spite, however, of
his censure and warning, Emma lays a plan of marrying
Harriet Smith to the vicar; and though she succeeds
perfectly in diverting her simple friend’s thoughts
from an honest farmer who had made her a very suitable
offer, and in flattering her into a passion for Mr.
Elton, yet, on the other hand, that conceited divine
totally mistakes the nature of the encouragement held
out to him, and attributes the favour which he found
in Miss Woodhouse’s eyes to a lurking affection
on her own part. This at length encourages him
to a presumptuous declaration of his sentiments; upon
receiving a repulse, he looks abroad elsewhere, and
enriches the Highbury society by uniting himself to
a dashing young woman with as many thousands as are
usually called ten, and a corresponding quantity of
presumption and ill breeding.

While Emma is thus vainly engaged in forging wedlock-fetters
for others, her friends have views of the same kind
upon her, in favour of a son of Mr. Weston by a former
marriage, who bears the name, lives under the patronage,
and is to inherit the fortune of a rich uncle.
Unfortunately Mr. Frank Churchill had already settled
his affections on Miss Jane Fairfax, a young lady
of reduced fortune; but as this was a concealed affair,
Emma, when Mr. Churchill first appears on the stage,
has some thoughts of being in love with him herself;
speedily, however, recovering from that dangerous
propensity, she is disposed to confer him upon her
deserted friend Harriet Smith. Harriet has in
the interim, fallen desperately in love with Mr. Knightley,
the sturdy, advice-giving bachelor; and, as all the
village supposes Frank Churchill and Emma to be attached
to each other, there are cross purposes enough (were
the novel of a more romantic cast) for cutting half
the men’s throats and breaking all the women’s
hearts. But at Highbury Cupid walks decorously,
and with good discretion, bearing his torch under a
lanthorn, instead of flourishing it around to set
the house on fire. All these entanglements bring
on only a train of mistakes and embarrassing situations,
and dialogues at balls and parties of pleasure, in
which the author displays her peculiar powers of humour
and knowledge of human life. The plot is extricated
with great simplicity. The aunt of Frank Churchill
dies; his uncle, no longer under her baneful influence,
consents to his marriage with Jane Fairfax. Mr.
Knightley and Emma are led, by this unexpected incident,
to discover that they had been in love with each other
all along. Mr. Woodhouse’s objections to

Page 169

the marriage of his daughter are overpowered by the
fears of house-breakers, and the comfort which he
hopes to derive from having a stout son-in-law resident
in the family; and the facile affections of Harriet
Smith are transferred, like a bank bill by indorsation,
to her former suitor, the honest farmer, who had obtained
a favourable opportunity of renewing his addresses.
Such is the simple plan of a story which we peruse
with pleasure, if not with deep interest, and which
perhaps we might more willingly resume than one of
those narratives where the attention is strongly riveted,
during the first perusal, by the powerful excitement
of curiosity.

The author’s knowledge of the world, and the
peculiar tact with which she presents characters that
the reader cannot fail to recognize, reminds us something
of the merits of the Flemish school of painting.
The subjects are not often elegant, and certainly never
grand; but they are finished up to nature, and with
a precision which delights the reader. This is
a merit which it is very difficult to illustrate by
extracts, because it pervades the whole work, and is
not to be comprehended from a single passage.
The following is a dialogue between Mr. Woodhouse,
and his elder daughter Isabella, who shares his anxiety
about health, and has, like her father, a favourite
apothecary. The reader must be informed that
this lady, with her husband, a sensible, peremptory
sort of person, had come to spend a week with her father.

* * * *
*

Perhaps the reader may collect from the preceding
specimen both the merits and faults of the author.
The former consists much in the force of a narrative
conducted with much neatness and point, and a quiet
yet comic dialogue, in which the characters of the
speakers evolve themselves with dramatic effect.
The faults, on the contrary, arise from the minute
detail which the author’s plan comprehends.
Characters of folly or simplicity, such as those of
old Woodhouse and Miss Bates, are ridiculous when
first presented, but if too often brought forward or
too long dwelt upon, their prosing is apt to become
as tiresome in fiction as in real society. Upon
the whole, the turn of this author’s novels
bears the same relation to that of the sentimental
and romantic cast, that cornfields and cottages and
meadows bear to the highly adorned grounds of a show
mansion, or the rugged sublimities of a mountain landscape.
It is neither so captivating as the one, nor so grand
as the other, but it affords to those who frequent
it a pleasure nearly allied with the experience of
their own social habits; and what is of some importance,
the youthful wanderer may return from his promenade
to the ordinary business of life, without any chance
of having his head turned by the recollection of the
scene through which he has been wandering.

Page 170

One word, however, we must say in behalf of that once
powerful divinity, Cupid, king of gods and men, who
in these times of revolution, has been assailed, even
in his own kingdom of romance, by the authors who were
formerly his devoted priests. We are quite aware
that there are few instances of first attachment being
brought to a happy conclusion, and that it seldom
can be so in a state of society so highly advanced
as to render early marriages among the better class,
acts, generally speaking, of imprudence. But
the youth of this realm need not at present be taught
the doctrine of selfishness. It is by no means
their error to give the world or the good things of
the world all for love; and before the authors of
moral fiction couple Cupid indivisibly with calculating
prudence, we would have them reflect, that they may
sometimes lend their aid to substitute more mean,
more sordid, and more selfish motives of conduct,
for the romantic feelings which their predecessors
perhaps fanned into too powerful a flame. Who
is it, that in his youth has felt a virtuous attachment,
however romantic or however unfortunate, but can trace
back to its influence much that his character may possess
of what is honourable, dignified, and disinterested?
If he recollects hours wasted in unavailing hope,
or saddened by doubt and disappointment; he may also
dwell on many which have been snatched from folly or
libertinism, and dedicated to studies which might render
him worthy of the object of his affection, or pave
the way perhaps to that distinction necessary to raise
him to an equality with her. Even the habitual
indulgence of feelings totally unconnected with ourself
and our own immediate interest, softens, graces, and
amends the human mind; and after the pain of disappointment
is past, those who survive (and by good fortune those
are the greater number) are neither less wise nor less
worthy members of society for having felt, for a time,
the influence of a passion which has been well qualified
as the “tenderest, noblest and best.”

ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON
JANE AUSTEN

[From The Quarterly Review, January, 1821]

Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion. By the
Author of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice,
Mansfield Park, and Emma. 4 vols.
New Edition.

The times seem to be past when an apology was requisite
from reviewers for condescending to notice a novel;
when they felt themselves bound in dignity to deprecate
the suspicion of paying much regard to such trifles,
and pleaded the necessity of occasionally stooping
to humour the taste of their fair readers. The
delights of fiction, if not more keenly or more generally
relished, are at least more readily acknowledged by
men of sense and taste; and we have lived to hear the
merits of the best of this class of writings earnestly
discussed by some of the ablest scholars and soundest
reasoners of the present day.

Page 171

We are inclined to attribute this change, not so much
to an alteration in the public taste, as in the character
of the productions in question. Novels may not,
perhaps, display more genius now than formerly, but
they contain more solid sense; they may not afford
higher gratification, but it is of a nature which
men are less disposed to be ashamed of avowing.
We remarked, in a former Number, in reviewing a work
of the author now before us, that “a new style
of novel has arisen, within the last fifteen or twenty
years, differing from the former in the points upon
which the interest hinges; neither alarming our credulity
nor amusing our imagination by wild variety of incident,
or by those pictures of romantic affection and sensibility,
which were formerly as certain attributes of fictitious
characters as they are of rare occurrence among those
who actually live and die. The substitute for
these excitements, which had lost much of their poignancy
by the repeated and injudicious use of them, was the
art of copying from nature as she really exists in
the common walks of life, and presenting to the reader,
instead of the splendid scenes of an imaginary world,
a correct and striking representation of that which
is daily taking place around him.”

Now, though the origin of this new school of fiction
may probably be traced, as we there suggested, to
the exhaustion of the mines from which materials for
entertainment had been hitherto extracted, and the
necessity of gratifying the natural craving of the
reader for variety, by striking into an untrodden
path; the consequences resulting from this change
have been far greater than the mere supply of this
demand. When this Flemish painting, as it were,
is introduced—­this accurate and unexaggerated
delineation of events and characters—­it
necessarily follows, that a novel, which makes good
its pretensions of giving a perfectly correct picture
of common life, becomes a far more instructive
work than one of equal or superior merit of the other
class; it guides the judgment, and supplies a kind
of artificial experience. It is a remark of the
great father of criticism, that poetry (i.e.,
narrative, and dramatic poetry) is of a more philosophical
character than history; inasmuch as the latter details
what has actually happened, of which many parts may
chance to be exceptions to the general rules of probability,
and consequently illustrate no general principles;
whereas the former shews us what must naturally, or
would probably, happen under given circumstances;
and thus displays to us a comprehensive view of human
nature, and furnishes general rules of practical wisdom.
It is evident, that this will apply only to such fictions
as are quite perfect in respect of the probability
of their story; and that he, therefore, who resorts
to the fabulist rather than the historian, for instruction
in human character and conduct, must throw himself
entirely on the judgment and skill of his teacher,

Page 172

and give him credit for talents much more rare than
the accuracy and veracity which are the chief requisites
in history. We fear, therefore, that the exultation
which we can conceive some of our gentle readers to
feel, at having Aristotle’s warrant for (what
probably they had never dreamed of) the philosophical
character of their studies, must, in practice,
be somewhat qualified, by those sundry little violations
of probability which are to be met with in most novels;
and which so far lower their value, as models of real
life, that a person who had no other preparation for
the world than is afforded by them, would form, probably,
a less accurate idea of things as they are, than he
would of a lion from studying merely the representations
on China tea-pots.

Accordingly, a heavy complaint has long lain against
works of fiction, as giving a false picture of what
they profess to imitate, and disqualifying their readers
for the ordinary scenes and everyday duties of life.
And this charge applies, we apprehend, to the generality
of what are strictly called novels, with even more
justice than to romances. When all the characters
and events are very far removed from what we see around
us,—­when, perhaps, even supernatural agents
are introduced, the reader may indulge, indeed, in
occasional day-dreams, but will be so little reminded
by what he has been reading, of anything that occurs
in actual life, that though he may perhaps feel some
disrelish for the tameness of the scene before him,
compared with the fairy-land he has been visiting,
yet at least his judgment will not be depraved, nor
his expectations misled; he will not apprehend a meeting
with Algerine banditti on English shores, nor regard
the old woman who shews him about an antique country
seat, as either an enchantress or the keeper of an
imprisoned damsel. But it is otherwise with those
fictions which differ from common life in little or
nothing but the improbability of the occurrences:
the reader is insensibly led to calculate upon some
of those lucky incidents and opportune coincidences
of which he has been so much accustomed to read, and
which, it is undeniable, may take place in
real life; and to feel a sort of confidence, that however
romantic his conduct may be, and in whatever difficulties
it may involve him, all will be sure to come right
at last, as is invariably the case with the hero of
a novel.

On the other hand, so far as these pernicious effects
fail to be produced, so far does the example lose
its influence, and the exercise of poetical justice
is rendered vain. The reward of virtuous conduct
being brought about by fortunate accidents, he who
abstains (taught, perhaps, by bitter disappointments)
from reckoning on such accidents, wants that encouragement
to virtue, which alone has been held out to him.
“If I were a man in a novel,” we
remember to have heard an ingenious friend observe,
“I should certainly act so and so, because I
should be sure of being no loser by the most heroic
self-devotion and of ultimately succeeding in the
most daring enterprises.”

Page 173

It may be said, in answer, that these objections apply
only to the unskilful novelist, who, from ignorance
of the world, gives an unnatural representation of
what he professes to delineate. This is partly
true, and partly not; for there is a distinction to
be made between the unnatural and the merely
improbable: a fiction is unnatural when
there is some assignable reason against the events
taking place as described,—­when men are
represented as acting contrary to the character assigned
them, or to human nature in general; as when a young
lady of seventeen, brought up in ease, luxury and retirement,
with no companions but the narrow-minded and illiterate,
displays (as a heroine usually does) under the most
trying circumstances, such wisdom, fortitude, and
knowledge of the world, as the best instructors and
the best examples can rarely produce without the aid
of more mature age and longer experience.—­On
the other hand, a fiction is still improbable,
though not unnatural, when there is no reason
to be assigned why things should not take place as
represented, except that the overbalance of chances
is against it; the hero meets, in his utmost distress,
most opportunely, with the very person to whom he had
formerly done a signal service, and who happens to
communicate to him a piece of intelligence which sets
all to rights. Why should he not meet him as
well as any one else? all that can be said is, that
there is no reason why he should. The infant
who is saved from a wreck, and who afterwards becomes
such a constellation of virtues and accomplishments,
turns out to be no other than the nephew of the very
gentleman, on whose estate the waves had cast him,
and whose lovely daughter he had so long sighed for
in vain: there is no reason to be given, except
from the calculation of chances, why he should not
have been thrown on one part of the coast as well
as another. Nay, it would be nothing unnatural,
though the most determined novel-reader would be shocked
at its improbability, if all the hero’s enemies,
while they were conspiring his ruin were to be struck
dead together by a lucky flash of lightning: yet
many denouements which are decidedly unnatural,
are better tolerated than this would be. We shall,
perhaps, best explain our meaning by examples, taken
from a novel of great merit in many respects.
When Lord Glenthorn, in whom a most unfavourable education
has acted on a most unfavourable disposition, after
a life of torpor, broken only by short sallies of
forced exertion, on a sudden reverse of fortune, displays
at once the most persevering diligence in the most
repulsive studies, and in middle life, without any
previous habits of exertion, any hope of early business,
or the example of friends, or the stimulus of actual
want, to urge him, outstrips every competitor, though
every competitor has every advantage against him;
this is unnatural.—­When Lord Glenthorn,
the instant he is stripped of his estates, meets,

Page 174

falls in love with, and is conditionally accepted
by the very lady who is remotely intitled to those
estates; when, the instant he has fulfilled the conditions
of their marriage, the family of the person possessed
of the estates becomes extinct, and by the concurrence
of circumstances, against every one of which the chances
were enormous, the hero is re-instated in all his
old domains; this is merely improbable. The distinction
which we have been pointing out may be plainly perceived
in the events of real life; when any thing takes place
of such a nature as we should call, in a fiction,
merely improbable, because there are many chances against
it, we call it a lucky or unlucky accident, a singular
coincidence, something very extraordinary, odd, curious,
etc.; whereas any thing which, in a fiction,
would be called unnatural, when it actually occurs
(and such things do occur), is still called unnatural,
inexplicable, unaccountable, inconceivable, etc.,
epithets which are not applied to events that have
merely the balance of chances against them.

Now, though an author who understands human nature
is not likely to introduce into his fictions any thing
that is unnatural, he will often have much that is
improbable: he may place his personages, by the
intervention of accident, in striking situations, and
lead them through a course of extraordinary adventures;
and yet, in the midst of all this, he will keep up
the most perfect consistency of character, and make
them act as it would be natural for men to act in
such situations and circumstances. Fielding’s
novels are a good illustration of this: they
display great knowledge of mankind; the characters
are well preserved; the persons introduced all act
as one would naturally expect they should, in the
circumstances in which they are placed; but these
circumstances are such as it is incalculably improbable
should ever exist: several of the events, taken
singly, are much against the chances of probability;
but the combination of the whole in a connected series,
is next to impossible. Even the romances which
admit a mixture of supernatural agency, are not more
unfit to prepare men for real life, than such novels
as these; since one might just as reasonably calculate
on the intervention of a fairy, as on the train of
lucky chances which combine first to involve Tom Jones
in his difficulties, and afterwards to extricate him.
Perhaps, indeed, the supernatural fable is of the two
not only (as we before remarked) the less mischievous
in its moral effects, but also the more correct kind
of composition in point of taste: the author
lays down a kind of hypothesis of the existence of
ghosts, witches, or fairies, and professes to describe
what would take place under that hypothesis; the novelist,
on the contrary, makes no demand of extraordinary
machinery, but professes to describe what may actually
take place, according to the existing laws of human
affairs: if he therefore present us with a series
of events quite unlike any which ever do take place,
we have reason to complain that he has not made good
his professions.

Page 175

When, therefore, the generality, even of the most
approved novels, were of this character (to say nothing
of the heavier charges brought, of inflaming the passions
of young persons by warm descriptions, weakening their
abhorrence of profligacy by exhibiting it in combination
with the most engaging qualities, and presenting vice
in all its allurements, while setting forth the triumphs
of “virtue rewarded”) it is not to be
wondered that the grave guardians of youth should have
generally stigmatized the whole class, as “serving
only to fill young people’s heads with romantic
love-stories, and rendering them unfit to mind anything
else.” That this censure and caution should
in many instances be indiscriminate, can surprize
no one, who recollects how rare a quality discrimination
is; and how much better it suits indolence, as well
as ignorance, to lay down a rule, than to ascertain
the exceptions to it: we are acquainted with
a careful mother whose daughters while they never
in their lives read a novel of any kind, are
permitted to peruse, without reserve, any plays
that happen to fall in their way; and with another,
from whom no lessons, however excellent, of wisdom
and piety, contained in a prose-fiction, can
obtain quarter; but who, on the other hand, is no
less indiscriminately indulgent to her children in
the article of tales in verse, of whatever character.

The change, however, which we have already noticed,
as having taken place in the character of several
modern novels, has operated in a considerable degree
to do away this prejudice; and has elevated this species
of composition, in some respects at least, into a much
higher class. For most of that instruction which
used to be presented to the world in the shape of
formal dissertations, or shorter and more desultory
moral essays, such as those of the Spectator
and Rambler, we may now resort to the pages
of the acute and judicious, but not less amusing,
novelists who have lately appeared. If their views
of men and manners are no less just than those of
the essayists who preceded them, are they to be rated
lower because they present to us these views, not
in the language of general description, but in the
form of well-constructed fictitious narrative?
If the practical lessons they inculcate are no less
sound and useful, it is surely no diminution of their
merit that they are conveyed by example instead of
precept: nor, if their remarks are neither less
wise nor less important, are they the less valuable
for being represented as thrown out in the course of
conversations suggested by the circumstances of the
speakers, and perfectly in character. The praise
and blame of the moralist are surely not the less
effectual for being bestowed, not in general declamation,
on classes of men, but on individuals representing
those classes, who are so clearly delineated and brought
into action before us, that we seem to be acquainted
with them, and feel an interest in their fate.

Page 176

Biography is allowed, on all hands, to be one of the
most attractive and profitable kinds of reading:
now such novels as we have been speaking of, being
a kind of fictitious biography, bear the same relation
to the real, that epic and tragic poetry, according
to Aristotle, bear to history: they present us
(supposing, of course, each perfect in its kind) with
the general, instead of the particular,—­the
probable, instead of the true; and, by leaving out
those accidental irregularities, and exceptions to
general rules, which constitute the many improbabilities
of real narrative, present us with a clear and abstracted
view of the general rules themselves; and thus concentrate,
as it were, into a small compass, the net result of
wide experience.

Among the authors of this school there is no one superior,
if equal, to the lady whose last production is now
before us, and whom we have much regret in finally
taking leave of: her death (in the prime of life,
considered as a writer) being announced in this the
first publication to which her name is prefixed.
We regret the failure not only of a source of innocent
amusement, but also of that supply of practical good
sense and instructive example, which she would probably
have continued to furnish better than any of her contemporaries:—­Miss
Edgeworth, indeed, draws characters and details conversations,
such as they occur in real life, with a spirit and
fidelity not to be surpassed; but her stories are
most romantically improbable (in the sense above explained),
almost all the important events of them being brought
about by most providential coincidences; and
this, as we have already remarked, is not merely faulty,
inasmuch as it evinces a want of skill in the writer,
and gives an air of clumsiness to the fiction, but
is a very considerable drawback on its practical utility:
the personages either of fiction or history being
then only profitable examples, when their good or
ill conduct meets its appropriate reward, not from
a sort of independent machinery of accidents, but
as a necessary or probable result, according to the
ordinary course of affairs. Miss Edgeworth also
is somewhat too avowedly didactic: that seems
to be true of her, which the French critics, in the
extravagance of their conceits, attributed to Homer
and Virgil; viz., that they first thought of a
moral, and then framed a fable to illustrate it; she
would, we think, instruct more successfully, and she
would, we are sure, please more frequently, if she
kept the design of teaching more out of sight, and
did not so glaringly press every circumstance of her
story, principal or subordinate, into the service
of a principle to be inculcated, or information to
be given. A certain portion of moral instruction
must accompany every well-invented narrative.
Virtue must be represented as producing, at the long
run, happiness; and vice, misery; and the accidental
events, that in real life interrupt this tendency,

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are anomalies which, though true individually, are
as false generally as the accidental deformities which
vary the average outline of the human figure.
They would be as much out of place in a fictitious
narrative, as a wen in an academic model. But
any direct attempt at moral teaching, and any
attempt whatever to give scientific information will,
we fear, unless managed with the utmost discretion,
interfere with what, after all, is the immediate and
peculiar object of the novelist, as of the poet, to
please. If instruction do not join as a volunteer,
she will do no good service. Miss Edgeworth’s
novels put us in mind of those clocks and watches which
are condemned “a double or a treble debt to pay”:
which, besides their legitimate object, to show the
hour, tell you the day of the month or the week, give
you a landscape for a dial-plate, with the second hand
forming the sails of a windmill, or have a barrel to
play a tune, or an alarum to remind you of an engagement:
all very good things in their way; but so it is that
these watches never tell the time so well as those
in which that is the exclusive object of the maker.
Every additional movement is an obstacle to the original
design. We do not deny that we have learned much
physic, and much law, from Patronage, particularly
the latter, for Miss Edgeworth’s law is of a
very original kind; but it was not to learn law and
physic that we took up the book, and we suspect we
should have been more pleased if we had been less
taught. With regard to the influence of religion,
which is scarcely, if at all, alluded to in Miss Edgeworth’s
novels, we would abstain from pronouncing any decision
which should apply to her personally. She may,
for aught we know, entertain opinions which would not
permit her, with consistency, to attribute more to
it than she has done; in that case she stands acquitted,
in foro conscientiae, of wilfully suppressing
any thing which she acknowledges to be true and important;
but, as a writer, it must still be considered as a
blemish, in the eyes at least of those who think differently,
that virtue should be studiously inculcated with scarcely
any reference to what they regard as the main spring
of it; that vice should be traced to every other source
except the want of religious principle; that the most
radical change from worthlessness to excellence should
be represented as wholly independent of that agent
which they consider as the only one that can accomplish
it; and that consolation under affliction should be
represented as derived from every source except the
one which they look to as the only true and sure one:
“is it not because there is no God in Israel
that ye have sent to inquire of Baalzebub the God
of Ekron?”

Page 178

Miss Austin has the merit (in our judgment most essential)
of being evidently a Christian writer: a merit
which is much enhanced, both on the score of good
taste, and of practical utility, by her religion being
not at all obtrusive. She might defy the most
fastidious critic to call any of her novels (as Caelebs
was designated, we will not say altogether without
reason), a “dramatic sermon.” The
subject is rather alluded to, and that incidentally,
than studiously brought forward and dwelt upon.
In fact she is more sparing of it than would be thought
desirable by some persons; perhaps even by herself,
had she consulted merely her own sentiments; but she
probably introduced it as far as she thought would
be generally acceptable and profitable: for when
the purpose of inculcating a religious principle is
made too palpably prominent, many readers, if they
do not throw aside the book with disgust, are apt
to fortify themselves with that respectful kind of
apathy with which they undergo a regular sermon, and
prepare themselves as they do to swallow a dose of
medicine, endeavouring to get it down in large
gulps, without tasting it more than is necessary.

The moral lessons also of this lady’s novels,
though clearly and impressively conveyed, are not
offensively put forward, but spring incidentally from
the circumstances of the story; they are not forced
upon the reader, but he is left to collect them (though
without any difficulty) for himself: hers is
that unpretending kind of instruction which is furnished
by real life; and certainly no author has ever conformed
more closely to real life, as well in the incidents,
as in the characters and descriptions. Her fables
appear to us to be, in their own way, nearly faultless;
they do not consist (like those of some of the writers
who have attempted this kind of common-life novel writing)
of a string of unconnected events which have little
or no bearing on one main plot, and are introduced
evidently for the sole purpose of bringing in characters
and conversations; but have all that compactness of
plan and unity of action which is generally produced
by a sacrifice of probability: yet they have
little or nothing that is not probable; the story
proceeds without the aid of extraordinary accidents;
the events which take place are the necessary or natural
consequences of what has preceded; and yet (which
is a very rare merit indeed) the final catastrophe
is scarcely ever clearly foreseen from the beginning,
and very often comes, upon the generality of readers
at least, quite unexpected. We know not whether
Miss Austin ever had access to the precepts of Aristotle;
but there are few, if any, writers of fiction who
have illustrated them more successfully.

Page 179

The vivid distinctness of description, the minute
fidelity of detail, and air of unstudied ease in the
scenes represented, which are no less necessary than
probability of incident, to carry the reader’s
imagination along with the story, and give fiction
the perfect appearance of reality, she possesses in
a high degree; and the object is accomplished without
resorting to those deviations from the ordinary plan
of narrative in the third person, which have been patronized
by some eminent masters. We allude to the two
other methods of conducting a fictitious story, viz.,
either by narrative in the first person, when the
hero is made to tell his own tale, or by a series of
letters; both of which we conceive have been adopted
with a view of heightening the resemblance of the
fiction to reality. At first sight, indeed, there
might appear no reason why a story told in the first
person should have more the air of a real history
than in the third; especially as the majority of real
histories actually are in the third person; nevertheless,
experience seems to show that such is the case:
provided there be no want of skill in the writer,
the resemblance to real life, of a fiction thus conducted,
will approach much the nearest (other points being
equal) to a deception, and the interest felt in it,
to that which we feel in real transactions. We
need only instance Defoe’s Novels, which, in
spite of much improbability, we believe have been
oftener mistaken for true narratives, than any fictions
that ever were composed. Colonel Newport is well
known to have been cited as an historical authority;
and we have ourselves found great difficulty in convincing
many of our friends that Defoe was not himself the
citizen, who relates the plague of London. The
reason probably is, that in the ordinary form of narrative,
the writer is not content to exhibit, like a real
historian, a bare detail of such circumstances as might
actually have come under his knowledge; but presents
us with a description of what is passing in the minds
of the parties, and gives an account of their feelings
and motives, as well as their most private conversations
in various places at once. All this is very amusing,
but perfectly unnatural: the merest simpleton
could hardly mistake a fiction of this kind
for a true history, unless he believed the writer to
be endued with omniscience and omnipresence, or to
be aided by familiar spirits, doing the office of
Homer’s Muses, whom he invokes to tell him all
that could not otherwise be known;

[Greek: Umeis gar theoi eote pareote
te, iote te panta.]

Page 180

Let the events, therefore, which are detailed, and
the characters described, be ever so natural, the
way in which they are presented to us is of a kind
of supernatural cast, perfectly unlike any real history
that ever was or can be written, and thus requiring
a greater stretch of imagination in the reader.
On the other hand, the supposed narrator of his own
history never pretends to dive into the thoughts and
feelings of the other parties; he merely describes
his own, and gives his conjectures as to those of
the rest, just as a real autobiographer might do;
and thus an author is enabled to assimilate his fiction
to reality, without withholding that delineation of
the inward workings of the human heart, which is so
much coveted. Nevertheless novels in the first
person have not succeeded so well as to make that
mode of writing become very general. It is objected
to them, not without reason, that they want a hero:
the person intended to occupy that post being the narrator
himself, who of course cannot so describe his own conduct
and character as to make the reader thoroughly acquainted
with him; though the attempt frequently produces an
offensive appearance of egotism.

The plan of a fictitious correspondence seems calculated
in some measure to combine the advantages of the other
two; since, by allowing each personage to be the speaker
in turn, the feelings of each may be described by
himself, and his character and conduct by another.
But these novels are apt to become excessively tedious;
since, to give the letters the appearance of reality
(without which the main object proposed would be defeated),
they must contain a very large proportion of matter
which has no bearing at all upon the story. There
is also generally a sort of awkward disjointed appearance
in a novel which proceeds entirely in letters, and
holds together, as it were, by continual splicing.

Miss Austin, though she has in a few places introduced
letters with great effect, has on the whole conducted
her novels on the ordinary plan, describing, without
scruple, private conversations and uncommunicated
feelings: but she has not been forgetful of the
important maxim, so long ago illustrated by Homer,
and afterwards enforced by Aristotle,[1] of saying
as little as possible in her own person, and giving
a dramatic air to the narrative, by introducing frequent
conversations; which she conducts with a regard to
character hardly exceeded even by Shakespeare himself.
Like him, she shows as admirable a discrimination
in the characters of fools as of people of sense; a
merit which is far from common. To invent, indeed,
a conversation full of wisdom or of wit, requires
that the writer should himself possess ability; but
the converse does not hold good: it is no fool
that can describe fools well; and many who have succeeded
pretty well in painting superior characters, have
failed in giving individuality to those weaker ones,
which it is necessary to introduce in order to give

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a faithful representation of real life: they
exhibit to us mere folly in the abstract, forgetting
that to the eye of a skilful naturalist the insects
on a leaf present as wide differences as exist between
the elephant and the lion. Slender, and Shallow,
and Aguecheek, as Shakespeare has painted them, though
equally fools, resemble one another no more than “Richard,”
and “Macbeth,” and “Julius Caesar”;
and Miss Austin’s “Mrs. Bennet,”
“Mr. Rushworth,” and “Miss Bates,”
are no more alike than her “Darcy,” “Knightley,”
and “Edmund Bertram.” Some have complained,
indeed, of finding her fools too much like nature,
and consequently tiresome; there is no disputing about
tastes; all we can say is, that such critics must
(whatever deference they may outwardly pay to received
opinions) find the “Merry Wives of Windsor”
and “Twelfth Night” very tiresome; and
that those who look with pleasure at Wilkie’s
pictures, or those of the Dutch school, must admit
that excellence of imitation may confer attraction
on that which would be insipid or disagreeable in the
reality.

[1] [Greek: ouden anthes] Arist.
Poet.

Her minuteness of detail has also been found fault
with; but even where it produces, at the time, a degree
of tediousness, we know not whether that can justly
be reckoned a blemish, which is absolutely essential
to a very high excellence. Now, it is absolutely
impossible, without this, to produce that thorough
acquaintance with the characters, which is necessary
to make the reader heartily interested in them.
Let any one cut out from the Iliad or from
Shakespeare’s plays every thing (we are far
from saying that either might not lose some parts with
advantage, but let him reject every thing) which is
absolutely devoid of importance and of interest in
itself; and he will find that what is left will
have lost more than half its charms. We are convinced
that some writers have diminished the effect of their
works by being scrupulous to admit nothing into them
which had not some absolute, intrinsic, and independent
merit. They have acted like those who strip off
the leaves of a fruit tree, as being of themselves
good for nothing, with the view of securing more nourishment
to the fruit, which in fact cannot attain its full
maturity and flavour without them.

* * * *
*

To say the truth, we suspect one of Miss Austin’s
great merits in our eyes to be, the insight she gives
us into the peculiarities of female character.
Authoresses can scarcely ever forget the esprit
de corps—­ can scarcely ever forget
that they are authoresses. They seem to
feel a sympathetic shudder at exposing naked a female
mind. Elles se peignent en buste, and leave
the mysteries of womanhood to be described by some
interloping male, like Richardson or Marivaux, who
is turned out before he has seen half the rites, and
is forced to spin from his own conjectures the rest.
Now from this fault Miss Austin is free. Her

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heroines are what one knows women must be, though one
never can get them to acknowledge it. As liable
to “fall in love first,” as anxious to
attract the attention of agreeable men, as much taken
with a striking manner, or a handsome face, as unequally
gifted with constancy and firmness, as liable to have
their affections biassed by convenience or fashion,
as we, on our part, will admit men to be. As some
illustration of what we mean, we refer our readers
to the conversation between Miss Crawford and Fanny,
vol. iii, p. 102. Fanny’s meeting with her
father, p. 199; her reflections after reading Edmund’s
letter, 246; her happiness (good, and heroine though
she be) in the midst of the misery of all her friends,
when she finds that Edmund has decidedly broken with
her rival; feelings, all of them, which, under the
influence of strong passion, must alloy the purest
mind, but with which scarcely any authoress
but Miss Austin would have ventured to temper the aetherial
materials of a heroine.

But we must proceed to the publication of which the
title is prefixed to this article. It contains,
it seems, the earliest and the latest productions
of the author; the first of them having been purchased,
we are told, many years back by a bookseller, who,
for some reason unexplained, thought proper to alter
his mind and withhold it. We do not much applaud
his taste; for though it is decidedly inferior to her
other works, having less plot, and what there is,
less artificially wrought up, and also less exquisite
nicety of moral painting; yet the same kind of excellences
which characterise the other novels may be perceived
in this, in a degree which would have been highly
creditable to most other writers of the same school,
and which would have entitled the author to considerable
praise, had she written nothing better.

We already begin to fear, that we have indulged too
much in extracts, and we must save some room for Persuasion,
or we could not resist giving a specimen of John Thorpe,
with his horse that cannot go less than 10
miles an hour, his refusal to drive his sister “because
she has such thick ankles,” and his sober consumption
of five pints of port a day; altogether the best portrait
of a species, which, though almost extinct, cannot
yet be quite classed among the Palaeotheria, the Bang-up
Oxonian. Miss Thorpe, the jilt of middling life,
is, in her way, quite as good, though she has not
the advantage of being the representative of a rare
or a diminishing species. We fear few of our readers,
however they may admire the naivete, will admit the
truth of poor John Morland’s postscript, “I
can never expect to know such another woman.”

Page 183

The latter of these novels, however, Persuasion,
which is more strictly to be considered as a posthumous
work, possesses that superiority which might be expected
from the more mature age at which it was written,
and is second, we think, to none of the former ones,
if not superior to all. In the humorous delineation
of character it does not abound quite so much as some
of the others, though it has great merit even on that
score; but it has more of that tender and yet elevated
kind of interest which is aimed at by the generality
of novels, and in pursuit of which they seldom fail
of running into romantic extravagance: on the
whole, it is one of the most elegant fictions of common
life we ever remember to have met with.

Sir Walter Elliot, a silly and conceited baronet,
has three daughters, the eldest two, unmarried, and
the third, Mary, the wife of a neighbouring gentleman,
Mr. Charles Musgrove, heir to a considerable fortune,
and living in a genteel cottage in the neighbourhood
of the Great house which he is hereafter to inherit.
The second daughter, Anne, who is the heroine, and
the only one of the family possessed of good sense
(a quality which Miss Austin is as sparing of in her
novels, as we fear her great mistress, Nature, has
been in real life), when on a visit to her sister,
is, by that sort of instinct which generally points
out to all parties the person on whose judgment and
temper they may rely, appealed to in all the little
family differences which arise, and which are described
with infinite spirit and detail.

* * * *
*

We ventured, in a former article, to remonstrate against
the dethronement of the once powerful God of Love,
in his own most especial domain, the novel; and to
suggest that, in shunning the ordinary fault of recommending
by examples a romantic and uncalculating extravagance
of passion, Miss Austin had rather fallen into the
opposite extreme of exclusively patronizing what are
called prudent matches, and too much disparaging sentimental
enthusiasm. We urged, that, mischievous as is
the extreme on this side, it is not the one into which
the young folks of the present day are the most likely
to run: the prevailing fault is not now, whatever
it may have been, to sacrifice all for love:

We may now, without retracting our opinion, bestow
unqualified approbation; for the distresses of the
present heroine all arise from her prudent refusal
to listen to the suggestions of her heart. The
catastrophe, however, is happy, and we are left in
doubt whether it would have been better for her or
not, to accept the first proposal; and this we conceive
is precisely the proper medium; for, though we would
not have prudential calculations the sole principle
to be regarded in marriage, we are far from advocating
their exclusion. To disregard the advice of sober-minded

Page 184

friends on an important point of conduct, is an imprudence
we would by no means recommend; indeed, it is a species
of selfishness, if, in listening only to the dictates
of passion, a man sacrifices to its gratification
the happiness of those most dear to him as well as
his own; though it is not now-a-days the most prevalent
form of selfishness. But it is no condemnation
of a sentiment to say, that it becomes blameable when
it interferes with duty, and is uncontrolled by conscience:
the desire of riches, power, or distinction—­the
taste for ease and comfort—­are to be condemned
when they transgress these bounds; and love, if it
keep within them, even though it be somewhat tinged
with enthusiasm, and a little at variance with what
the worldly call prudence, i.e., regard for
pecuniary advantage, may afford a better moral discipline
to the mind than most other passions. It will
not at least be denied, that it has often proved a
powerful stimulus to exertion where others have failed,
and has called forth talents unknown before even to
the possessor. What, though the pursuit may be
fruitless, and the hopes visionary? The result
may be a real and substantial benefit, though of another
kind; the vineyard may have been cultivated by digging
in it for the treasure which is never to be found.
What though the perfections with which imagination
has decorated the beloved object, may, in fact, exist
but in a slender degree? still they are believed in
and admired as real; if not, the love is such as does
not merit the name; and it is proverbially true that
men become assimilated to the character (i.e.,
what they think the character) of the being
they fervently adore: thus, as in the noblest
exhibitions of the stage, though that which is contemplated
be but a fiction, it may be realized in the mind of
the beholder; and, though grasping at a cloud, he may
become worthy of possessing a real goddess. Many
a generous sentiment, and many a virtuous resolution,
have been called forth and matured by admiration of
one, who may herself perhaps have been incapable of
either. It matters not what the object is that
a man aspires to be worthy of, and proposes as a model
for imitation, if he does but believe it to
be excellent. Moreover, all doubts of success
(and they are seldom, if ever, entirely wanting) must
either produce or exercise humility; and the endeavour
to study another’s interests and inclinations,
and prefer them to one’s own, may promote a habit
of general benevolence which may outlast the present
occasion. Every thing, in short, which tends
to abstract a man in any degree, or in any way, from
self,—­from self-admiration and self-interest,
has, so far at least, a beneficial influence in forming
the character.

Page 185

On the whole, Miss Austin’s works may safely
be recommended, not only as among the most unexceptionable
of their class, but as combining, in an eminent degree,
instruction with amusement, though without the direct
effort at the former, of which we have complained,
as sometimes defeating its object. For those
who cannot, or will not, learn anything from
productions of this kind, she has provided entertainment
which entitles her to thanks; for mere innocent amusement
is in itself a good, when it interferes with no greater:
especially as it may occupy the place of some other
that may not be innocent. The Eastern monarch
who proclaimed a reward to him who should discover
a new pleasure, would have deserved well of mankind
had he stipulated that it should be blameless.
Those, again, who delight in the study of human nature,
may improve in the knowledge of it, and in the profitable
application of that knowledge, by the perusal of such
fictions as those before us.

Mr. Tennyson published his first volume, under the
title of “Poems Chiefly Lyrical,” in 1830,
and his second, with the name simply of “Poems,”
in 1833. In 1842 he reappeared before the world
in two volumes, partly made up from the debris
of his earlier pieces; and from this time forward
he came into the enjoyment of a popularity at once
great, growing, and select. With a manly resolution,
which gave promise of the rare excellence he was progressively
to attain, he had at this time amputated altogether
from the collection about one-half of the contents
of his earliest work, with some considerable portion
of the second; he had almost rewritten or carefully
corrected other important pieces, and had added a
volume of new compositions.

The latter handiwork showed a great advance upon the
earlier; as, indeed, 1833 had shown upon 1830.
From the very first, however, he had been noteworthy
in performance as well as in promise, and it was plain
that, whatever else might happen, at least neglect
was not to be his lot. But, in the natural heat
of youth he had at the outset certainly mixed up some
trivial with a greater number of worthy productions,
and had shown an impatience of criticism by which,
however excusable, he was sure to be himself the chief
sufferer. His higher gifts, too, were of the
quality which, by the changeless law of nature, cannot
ripen fast; and there was, accordingly, some portion
both of obscurity and of crudity in the results of
his youthful labours. Men of slighter materials
would have come more quickly to their maturity, and

Page 186

might have given less occasion not only for cavil
but for animadversion. It was yet more creditable
to him, than it could be even to the just among his
critics, that he should, and while yet young, have
applied himself with so resolute a hand to the work
of castigation. He thus gave a remarkable proof
alike of his reverence for his art, of his insight
into its powers, of the superiority he had acquired
to all the more commonplace illusions of self-love,
and perhaps of his presaging consciousness that the
great, if they mean to fulfil the measure of their
greatness, should always be fastidious against themselves.

It would be superfluous to enter upon any general
criticism of this collection, which was examined when
still recent in this Review, and a large portion of
which is established in the familiar recollection and
favour of the public. We may, however, say that
what may be termed at large the classical idea (though
it is not that of Troas nor of the Homeric period)
has, perhaps, never been grasped with greater force
and justice than in “Oenone,” nor exhibited
in a form of more consummate polish. “Ulysses”
is likewise a highly finished poem; but it is open
to the remark that it exhibits (so to speak) a corner-view
of a character which was in itself a cosmos.
Never has political philosophy been wedded to the
poetic form more happily than in the three short pieces
on England and her institutions, unhappily without
title, and only to be cited, like writs of law and
papal bulls, by their first words. Even among
the rejected pieces there are specimens of a deep metaphysical
insight; and this power reappears with an increasing
growth of ethical and social wisdom in “Locksley
Hall” and elsewhere. The Wordsworthian
poem of “Dora” is admirable in its kind.
From the firmness of its drawing, and the depth and
singular purity of its colour, “Godiva”
stood, if we judge aright, as at once a great performance
and a great pledge. But, above all, the fragmentary
piece on the Death of Arthur was a fit prelude to
that lordly music which is now sounding in our ears.
If we pass onward from these volumes, it is only because
space forbids a further enumeration.

The “Princess” was published in 1847.
The author has termed it “a medley”:
why, we know not. It approaches more nearly to
the character of a regular drama, with the stage directions
written into verse, than any other of his works, and
it is composed consecutively throughout on the basis
of one idea. It exhibits an effort to amalgamate
the place and function of woman with that of man,
and the failure of that effort, which duly winds up
with the surrender and marriage of the fairest and
chief enthusiast. It may be doubted whether the
idea is one well suited to exhibition in a quasi-dramatic
form. Certainly the mode of embodying it, so
far as it is dramatic, is not successful; for here
again the persons are little better than mere personae.
They are media, and weak media, for
the conveyance of the ideas. The poem is, nevertheless,
one of high interest, on account of the force, purity
and nobleness of the main streams of thought, which
are clothed in language full of all Mr. Tennyson’s
excellences; and also because it marks the earliest
effort of his mind in the direction of his latest and
greatest achievements.

Page 187

* * * *
*

With passages like these still upon the mind and ear,
and likewise having in view many others in the “Princess”
and elsewhere, we may confidently assert it as one
of Mr. Tennyson’s brightest distinctions that
he is now what from the very first he strove to be,
and what when he wrote “Godiva” he gave
ample promise of becoming—­the poet of woman.
We do not mean, nor do we know, that his hold over
women as his readers is greater than his command or
influence over men; but that he has studied, sounded,
painted woman in form, in motion, in character, in
office, in capability, with rare devotion, power, and
skill; and the poet who best achieves this end does
also most and best for man.

In 1850 Mr. Tennyson gave to the world, under the
title of “In Memoriam,” perhaps the richest
oblation ever offered by the affection of friendship
at the tomb of the departed. The memory of Arthur
Henry Hallam, who died suddenly in 1833, at the age
of twenty-two, will doubtless live chiefly in connection
with this volume; but he is well known to have been
one who, if the term of his days had been prolonged,
would have needed no aid from a friendly hand, would
have built for himself an enduring monument, and would
have bequeathed to his country a name in all likelihood
greater than that of his very distinguished father.
There was no one among those who were blessed with
his friendship, nay, as we see, not even Mr. Tennyson,[1]
who did not feel at once bound closely to him by commanding
affection, and left far behind by the rapid, full,
and rich development of his ever-searching mind; by
his

All comprehensive tenderness,
All subtilising intellect.

[1] See “In Memoriam,” pp. 64, 84.

It would be easy to show what, in the varied forms
of human excellence, he might, had life been granted
him, have accomplished; much more difficult to point
the finger and to say, “This he never could have
done.” Enough remains from among his early
efforts to accredit whatever mournful witness may
now be borne of him. But what can be a nobler
tribute than this, that for seventeen years after his
death a poet, fast rising towards the lofty summits
of his art, found that young fading image the richest
source of his inspiration, and of thoughts that gave
him buoyancy for a flight such as he had not hitherto
attained?

It would be very difficult to convey a just idea of
this volume either by narrative or by quotation.
In the series of monodies or meditations which compose
it, and which follow in long series without weariness
or sameness, the poet never moves away a step from
the grave of his friend, but, while circling round
it, has always a new point of view. Strength
of love, depth of grief, aching sense of loss, have
driven him forth as it were on a quest of consolation,
and he asks it of nature, thought, religion, in a
hundred forms which a rich and varied imagination
continually suggests, but all of them connected by

Page 188

one central point, the recollection of the dead.
This work he prosecutes, not in vain effeminate complaint,
but in a manly recognition of the fruit and profit
even of baffled love, in noble suggestions of the future,
in heart-soothing and heart-chastening thoughts of
what the dead was and of what he is, and of what one
who has been, and therefore still is, in near contact
with him is bound to be. The whole movement of
the poem is between the mourner and the mourned:
it may be called one long soliloquy; but it has this
mark of greatness, that, though the singer is himself
a large part of the subject, it never degenerates into
egotism—­ for he speaks typically on behalf
of humanity at large, and in his own name, like Dante
on his mystic journey, teaches deep lessons of life
and conscience to us all.

* * * *
*

By the time “In Memoriam” had sunk into
the public mind, Mr. Tennyson had taken his rank as
our first then living poet. Over the fresh hearts
and understandings of the young, notwithstanding his
obscurities, his metaphysics, his contempt of gewgaws,
he had established an extraordinary sway. We
ourselves, with some thousands of other spectators,
saw him receive in that noble structure of Wren, the
theatre of Oxford, the decoration of D.C.L., which
we perceive he always wears on his title-page.
Among his colleagues in the honour were Sir De Lacy
Evans and Sir John Burgoyne, fresh from the stirring
exploits of the Crimea; but even patriotism, at the
fever heat of war, could not command a more fervent
enthusiasm for the old and gallant warriors than was
evoked by the presence of Mr. Tennyson.

In the year 1855 Mr. Tennyson proceeded to publish
his “Maud,” the least popular, and probably
the least worthy of popularity, among his more considerable
works. A somewhat heavy dreaminess, and a great
deal of obscurity, hang about this poem; and the effort
required to dispel the darkness of the general scheme
is not repaid when we discover what it hides.
The main thread of “Maud” seems to be this:—­A
love once accepted, then disappointed, leads to blood-shedding,
and onward to madness with lucid alternations.
The insanity expresses itself in the ravings of the
homicide lover, who even imagines himself among the
dead, in a clamour and confusion closely resembling
an ill-regulated Bedlam, but which, if the description
be a faithful one, would for ever deprive the grave
of its title to the epithet of silent. It may
be good frenzy, but we doubt its being as good poetry.
Of all this there may, we admit, be an esoteric view:
but we speak of the work as it offers itself to the
common eye. Both Maud and the lover are too nebulous
by far; and they remind us of the boneless and pulpy
personages by whom, as Dr. Whewell assures us, the
planet Jupiter is inhabited, if inhabited at all.
But the most doubtful part of the poem is its climax.
A vision of the beloved image (p. 97) “spoke
of a hope for the world in the coming wars,”
righteous wars, of course, and the madman begins to
receive light and comfort; but, strangely enough,
it seems to be the wars, and not the image, in which
the source of consolation lies (p. 98).

Page 189

No more shall Commerce be all in all,
and Peace Pipe on her pastoral hillock a languid
note, And watch her harvest ripen, her herd increase.
... a peace that was full of wrongs and shames,
Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told ...
For the long long canker of peace is over and done:
And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic deep,
And deathful grinning mouths of the fortress, names
The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire!

What interpretation are we meant to give to all this
sound and fury? We would fain have put it down
as intended to be the finishing-stroke in the picture
of a mania which has reached its zenith. We might
call in aid of this construction more happy and refreshing
passages from other poems, as when Mr. Tennyson is

Certain, if knowledge brings the
sword,
That knowledge takes the sword away.[1]

[1] “Poems,” p. 182, ed. 1853. See
also “Locksley Hall,” p. 278.

And again in “The Golden Dream,”—­

When
shall all men’s good
Be each man’s rule, and universal
peace
Lie like a shaft of light across the land?

And yet once more in a noble piece of “In Memoriam,”—­

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

But on the other hand we must recollect that very
long ago, when the apparition of invasion from across
the Channel had as yet spoiled no man’s slumbers,
Mr. Tennyson’s blood was already up:[2]—­

For the French, the Pope may shrive them
...
And the merry devil drive them
Through the water and the fire.

[2] “Poems chiefly Lyrical,” 1830, p.
142.

And unhappily in the beginning of “Maud,”
when still in the best use of such wits as he possesses,
its hero deals largely in kindred extravagances (p.
7):—­

When a Mammonite mother kills her babe
for a burial fee,
And Timour-Mammon grins on
a pile of children’s bones,
Is it peace or war? better war! loud war
by land and by sea,
War with a thousand battles,
and shaking a hundred thrones.

He then anticipates that, upon an enemy’s attacking
this country, “the smooth-faced, snub-nosed
rogue,” who typifies the bulk of the British
people, “the nation of shopkeepers,” as
it has been emasculated and corrupted by excess of
peace, will leap from his counter and till to charge
the enemy; and thus it is to be reasonably hoped that
we shall attain to the effectual renovation of society.

Page 190

We frankly own that our divining rod does not enable
us to say whether the poet intends to be in any and
what degree sponsor to these sentiments, or whether
he has put them forth in the exercise of his undoubted
right to make vivid and suggestive representations
of even the partial and narrow aspects of some endangered
truth. This is at best, indeed, a perilous business,
for out of such fervid partial representations nearly
all grave human error springs; and it should only
be pursued with caution and in season. But we
do not recollect that 1855 was a season of serious
danger from a mania for peace and its pursuits; and
even if it had been so, we fear that the passages we
have quoted far overpass all the bounds of moderation
and good sense. It is, indeed, true that peace
has its moral perils and temptations for degenerate
man, as has every other blessing, without exception,
that he can receive from the hand of God. It
is moreover not less true that, amidst the clash of
arms, the noblest forms of character may be reared,
and the highest acts of duty done; that these great
and precious results may be due to war as their cause;
and that one high form of sentiment in particular,
the love of country, receives a powerful and general
stimulus from the bloody strife. But this is
as the furious cruelty of Pharaoh made place for the
benign virtue of his daughter; as the butchering sentence
of Herod raised without doubt many a mother’s
love into heroic sublimity; as plague, as famine,
as fire, as flood, as every curse and every scourge
that is wielded by an angry Providence for the chastisement
of man, is an appointed instrument for tempering human
souls in the seven-times heated furnace of affliction,
up to the standard of angelic and archangelic virtue.
War, indeed, has the property of exciting much generous
and noble feeling on a large scale; but with this special
recommendation it has, in its modern forms especially,
peculiar and unequalled evils. As it has a wider
sweep of desolating power than the rest, so it has
the peculiar quality that it is more susceptible of
being decked in gaudy trappings, and of fascinating
the imagination of those whose passions it inflames.
But it is on this very account a perilous delusion
to teach that war is a cure for moral evil in any
other sense than as the sister tribulations are.
The eulogies of the frantic hero in “Maud,”
however, deviate into grosser folly. It is natural
that such vagaries should overlook the fixed laws of
Providence; and under these laws the mass of mankind
is composed of men, women, and children who can but
just ward off hunger, cold, and nakedness; whose whole
ideas of Mammon-worship are comprised in the search
for their daily food, clothing, shelter, fuel; whom
any casualty reduces to positive want; and whose already
low estimate is yet further lowered and ground down
when “the blood-red blossom of war flames with
its heart of fire.” But what is a little
strange is, that war should be recommended as a specific

Page 191

for the particular evil of Mammon-worship. Such
it never was, even in the days when the Greek heroes
longed for the booty of Troy, and anticipated lying
by the wives of its princes and its citizens.
Still it had, in times now gone by, ennobling elements
and tendencies of the less sordid kind. But one
inevitable characteristic of modern war is, that it
is associated throughout, in all its particulars,
with a vast and most irregular formation of commercial
enterprise. There is no incentive to Mammon-worship
so remarkable as that which it affords. The political
economy of war is now one of its most commanding aspects.
Every farthing, with the smallest exceptions conceivable,
of the scores or hundreds of millions which a war
may cost, goes directly to stimulate production, though
it is intended ultimately for waste or for destruction.
Apart from the fact that war destroys every rule of
public thrift, and saps honesty itself in the use of
the public treasure for which it makes such unbounded
calls, it therefore is the greatest feeder of that
lust of gold which we are told is the essence of commerce,
though we had hoped it was only its occasional besetting
sin. It is, however, more than this; for the
regular commerce of peace is tameness itself compared
with the gambling spirit which war, through the rapid
shiftings and high prices which it brings, always introduces
into trade. In its moral operation it more resembles,
perhaps, the finding of a new gold-field, than anything
else. Meantime, as the most wicked mothers do
not kill their offspring from a taste for the practice
in the abstract, but under the pressure of want, and
as war always brings home want to a larger circle
of the people than feel it in peace, we ask the hero
of “Maud” to let us know whether war is
more likely to reduce or to multiply the horrors which
he denounces? Will more babies be poisoned amidst
comparative ease and plenty, or when, as before the
fall of Napoleon, provisions were twice as dear as
they now are, and wages not much more than half as
high? Romans and Carthaginians were pretty much
given to war: but no nations were more sedulous
in the cult of Mammon. Again, the Scriptures
are pretty strong against Mammon-worship, but they
do not recommend this original and peculiar cure.
Nay, once more: what sad errors must have crept
into the text of the prophet Isaiah when he is made
to desire that our swords shall be converted into ploughshares,
and our spears into pruning-hooks! But we have
this solid consolation after all, that Mr. Tennyson’s
war poetry is not comparable to his poetry of peace.
Indeed he is not here successful at all: the work,
of a lower order than his, demands the abrupt force
and the lyric fire which do not seem to be among his
varied and brilliant gifts. We say more.
Mr. Tennyson is too intimately and essentially the
poet of the nineteenth century to separate himself
from its leading characteristics, the progress of
physical science and a vast commercial, mechanical,

Page 192

and industrial development. Whatever he may say
or do in an occasional fit, he cannot long either
cross or lose its sympathies; for while he elevates
as well as adorns it, he is flesh of its flesh and
bone of its bone. We fondly believe it is his
business to do much towards the solution of that problem,
so fearful from its magnitude, how to harmonise this
new draught of external power and activity with the
old and more mellow wine of faith, self devotion,
loyalty, reverence, and discipline. And all that
we have said is aimed, not at Mr. Tennyson, but at
a lay-figure which he has set up, and into the mouth
of which he has put words that cannot be his words.

We return to our proper task, “Maud,”
if an unintelligible or even, for Mr. Tennyson, an
inferior work, is still a work which no inferior man
could have produced; nor would it be difficult to extract
abundance of lines, and even passages, obviously worthy
of their author. And if this poem would have
made while alone a volume too light for his fame, the
defect is supplied by the minor pieces, some of which
are admirable. “The Brook,” with
its charming interstitial soliloquy, and the “Letters”
will, we are persuaded, always rank among Mr. Tennyson’s
happy efforts; while the “Ode on the Death of
the Duke of Wellington,” written from the heart
and sealed by the conscience of the poet, is worthy
of that great and genuine piece of manhood, its immortal
subject.

We must touch for a moment upon what has already been
mentioned as a separate subject of interest in the
“Princess.” We venture to describe
it as in substance a drama, with a plot imperfectly
worked and with characters insufficiently chiselled
and relieved. Its author began by presenting,
and for many years continued to present, personal as
well as natural pictures of individual attitude or
movement; and, as in “Oenone” and “Godiva,”
he carried them to a very high pitch of perfection.
But he scarcely attempted, unless in his more homely
narrations, anything like grouping or combination.
It now appears that for the higher effort he has been
gradually accumulating and preparing his resources.
In the sections of the prolonged soliloquy of “Maud”
we see a crude attempt at representing combined interests
and characters with heroic elevation, under the special
difficulty of appearing, like Mathews, in one person
only; in the “Princess” we had a happier
effort, though one that still left more to be desired.
Each, however, in its own stage was a preparation
for an enterprise at once bolder and more mature.

We now come to the recent work of the poet—­the
“Idylls of the King.” The field,
which Mr. Tennyson has chosen for this his recent and
far greatest exploit, is one of so deep and wide-reaching
an interest as to demand some previous notice of a
special kind.

Page 193

Lofty example in comprehensive forms is, without doubt,
one of the great standing needs of our race.
To this want it has been from the first one main purpose
of the highest poetry to answer. The quest of
Beauty leads all those who engage in it to the ideal
or normal man as the summit of attainable excellence.
By no arbitrary choice, but in obedience to unchanging
laws, the painter and the sculptor must found their
art upon the study of the human form, and must reckon
its successful reproduction as their noblest and most
consummate exploit. The concern of Poetry with
corporal beauty is, though important, yet secondary:
this art uses form as an auxiliary, as a subordinate
though proper part in the delineation of mind and
character, of which it is appointed to be a visible
organ. But with mind and character themselves
lies the highest occupation of the Muse. Homer,
the patriarch of poets, has founded his two immortal
works upon two of these ideal developments in Achilles
and Ulysses; and has adorned them with others, such
as Penelope and Helen, Hector and Diomed, every one
an immortal product, though as compared with the others
either less consummate or less conspicuous. Though
deformed by the mire of after-tradition, all the great
characters of Homer have become models and standards,
each in its own kind, for what was, or was supposed
to be, its distinguishing gift.

At length, after many generations and great revolutions
of mind and of events, another age arrived, like,
if not equal, in creative power to that of Homer.
The Gospel had given to the whole life of man a real
resurrection, and its second birth was followed by
its second youth. This rejuvenescence was allotted
to those wonderful centuries which popular ignorance
confounds with the dark ages properly so called—­an
identification about as rational as if we were to compare
the life within the womb to the life of intelligent
though early childhood. Awakened to aspirations
at once fresh and ancient, the mind of man took hold
of the venerable ideals bequeathed to us by the Greeks
as a precious part of its inheritance, and gave them
again to the light, appropriated but also renewed.
The old materials came forth, but not alone; for the
types which human genius had formerly conceived were
now submitted to the transfiguring action of a law
from on high. Nature herself prompted the effort
to bring the old patterns of worldly excellence and
greatness—­or rather the copies of those
patterns still legible, though depraved, and still
rich with living suggestion—­into harmony
with that higher Pattern, once seen by the eyes and
handled by the hands of men, and faithfully delineated
in the Gospels for the profit of all generations.
The life of our Saviour, in its external aspect, was
that of a teacher. It was in principle a model
for all, but it left space and scope for adaptations
to the lay life of Christians in general, such as
those by whom the every-day business of the world is
to be carried on. It remained for man to make
his best endeavour to exhibit the great model on its
terrestrial side, in its contact with the world.
Here is the true source of that new and noble cycle
which the middle ages have handed down to us in duality
of form, but with a nearly identical substance, under
the royal sceptres of Arthur in England and of Charlemagne
in France.

Page 194

Of the two great systems of Romance, one has Lancelot,
the other has Orlando for its culminating point; these
heroes being exhibited as the respective specimens
in whose characters the fullest development of man,
such as he was then conceived, was to be recognised.
The one put forward Arthur for the visible head of
Christendom, signifying and asserting its social unity;
the other had Charlemagne. Each arrays about the
Sovereign a fellowship of knights. In them Valour
is the servant of Honour; in an age of which violence
is the besetting danger, the protection of the weak
is elevated into a first principle of action; and they
betoken an order of things in which Force should be
only known as allied with Virtue, while they historically
foreshadow the magnificent aristocracy of mediaeval
Europe. The one had Guinevere for the rarest gem
of beauty, the other had Angelica. Each of them
contained figures of approximation to the knightly
model, and in each these figures, though on the whole
secondary, yet in certain aspects surpassed it:
such were Sir Tristram, Sir Galahad, Sir Lamoracke,
Sir Gawain, Sir Geraint, in the Arthurian cycle; Rinaldo
and Ruggiero, with others, in the Carlovingian.
They were not twin systems, but they were rather twin
investitures of the same scheme of ideals and feelings.
Their consanguinity to the primitive Homeric types
is proved by a multitude of analogies of character
and by the commanding place which they assign to Hector
as the flower of human excellence. Without doubt,
this preference was founded on his supposed moral
superiority to all his fellows in Homer; and the secondary
prizes of strength, valour, and the like, were naturally
allowed to group themselves around what, under the
Christian scheme, had become the primary ornament
of man. The near relation of the two cycles to
one another may be sufficiently seen in the leading
references we have made, and it runs into a multitude
of details both great and small, of which we can only
note a few. In both the chief hero passes through
a prolonged term of madness. Judas, in the College
of Apostles, is represented under Charlemagne in Gano
di Maganza and his house, who appear, without any
development in action, in the Arthurian romance as
“the traitours of Magouns,” and who are
likewise reflected in Sir Modred, Sir Agravain, and
others; while the Mahometan element, which has a natural
place ready made in a history that acknowledges Charlemagne
and France, for its centres, finds its way sympathetically
into one which is bound for the most part by the shores
of Albion. Both schemes cling to the tradition
of the unity of the Empire as well as of Christendom;
and accordingly, what was historical in Charlemagne
is represented in the case of Arthur by an imaginary
conquest reaching as far as Rome, the capital of the
West: even the sword Durindana has its
counterpart in the sword Excalibur.

Page 195

The moral systems of the two cycles are essentially
allied: and perhaps the differences between them
may be due in greater or in less part to the fact
that they come to us through different media.
We of the nineteenth century read the Carlovingian
romance in the pages of Ariosto and Bojardo, who gave
to their materials the colour of their times, and
of a civilization rank in some respects, while still
unripe in some others. The genius of poetry was
not at the same period applying its transmuting force
to the Romance of the Round Table. The date of
Sir Thomas Mallory, who lived under Edward IV, is
something earlier than that of the great Italian romances;
he appears, too, to have been on the whole content
with the humble offices of a compiler and a chronicler,
and we may conceive that his spirit and diction are
still older than his date. The consequence is,
that we are brought into more immediate and fresher
contact with the original forms of this romance.
So that, as they present themselves to us, the Carlovingian
cycle is the child of the latest middle age, while
the Arthurian represents the earlier. Much might
be said on the differences which have thus arisen,
and on those which may be due to a more northern and
more southern extraction respectively. Suffice
it to say that the Romance of the Round Table, far
less vivid and brilliant, far ruder as a work of skill
and art, has more of the innocence, the emotion, the
transparency, the inconsistency of childhood.
Its political action is less specifically Christian
than that of the rival scheme, its individual more
so. It is more directly and seriously aimed at
the perfection of man. It is more free from gloss
and varnish; it tells its own tale with more entire
simplicity. The ascetic element is more strongly,
and at the same time more quaintly, developed.
It has a higher conception of the nature of woman;
and like the Homeric poems, appears to eschew exhibiting
her perfections in alliance with warlike force and
exploits. So also love, while largely infused
into the story, is more subordinate to the exhibition
of other qualities. Again, the Romance of the
Round Table bears witness to a more distinct and keener
sense of sin: and on the whole, a deeper, broader,
and more manly view of human character, life, and
duty. It is in effect more like what the Carlovingian
cycle might have been had Dante moulded it. It
hardly needs to be added that it is more mythical,
inasmuch as Arthur of the Round Table is a personage,
we fear, wholly doubtful, though not impossible; while
the broad back of the historic Charlemagne, like another
Atlas, may well sustain a world of mythical accretions.
This slight comparison, be it remarked, refers exclusively
to what may be termed the latest “redactions”
of the two cycles of romance. Their early forms,
in the lays of troubadours, and in the pages of the
oldest chroniclers, offer a subject of profound interest,
and one still unexhausted, although it has been examined
by Mr. Panizzi and M. Fauriel,[1] but one which is
quite beyond the scope of our present subject.

Page 196

It is to this rich repository that Mr. Tennyson has
resorted for his material. He has shown, as we
think, rare judgment in the choice. The Arthurian
Romance has every recommendation that should win its
way to the homage of a great poet. It is national:
it is Christian. It is also human in the largest
and deepest sense; and, therefore, though highly national,
it is universal; for it rests upon those depths and
breadths of our nature to which all its truly great
developments in all nations are alike essentially
and closely related. The distance is enough for
atmosphere, not too much for detail; enough for romance,
not too much for sympathy. A poet of the nineteenth
century, the Laureate has adopted characters, incidents,
and even language in the main, instead of attempting
to project them on a basis of his own in the region
of illimitable fancy. But he has done much more
than this. Evidently by reading and by deep meditation,
as well as by sheer force of genius, he has penetrated
himself down to the very core of his being, with all
that is deepest and best in the spirit of the time,
or the representation, with which he deals; and as
others, using old materials, have been free to alter
them in the sense of vulgarity or licence, so he has
claimed and used the right to sever and recombine,
to enlarge, retrench, and modify, for the purposes
at once of a more powerful and elaborate art than
his original presents, and of a yet more elevated,
or at least of a far more sustained, ethical and Christian
strain.

We are rather disposed to quarrel with the title of
Idylls: for no diminutive ([Greek: eidullion])
can be adequate to the breadth, vigour, and majesty
which belong to the subjects, as well as to the execution,
of the volume. The poet used the name once before;
but he then applied it to pieces generally small in
the scale of their delineations, whereas these, even
if broken away one from the other, are yet like the
disjoined figures from the pediment of the Parthenon
in their dignity and force. One indeed among
Mr. Tennyson’s merits is, that he does not think
it necessary to keep himself aloft by artificial effort,
but undulates with his matter, and flies high or low
as it requires. But even in the humblest parts
of these poems—­as where the little Novice
describes the miniature sorrows and discipline of
childhood—­the whole receives its tone from
an atmosphere which is heroic, and which, even in
its extremest simplicity, by no means parts company
with grandeur, or ceases to shine in the reflected
light of the surrounding objects. Following the
example which the poet has set us in a former volume,
we would fain have been permitted, at least provisionally,
to call these Idylls by the name of Books. Term
them what we may, there are four of them—­arranged,
as we think, in an ascending scale.

Page 197

The simplicity and grace of the principal character
in Enid, with which the volume opens, touches, but
does not too strongly agitate, the deeper springs
of feeling. She is the beautiful daughter of Earl
Yniol, who, by his refusal of a turbulent neighbour
as a suitor, has drawn upon himself the ruin of his
fortunes, and is visited in his depressed condition
by (p. 1)—­

The brave Geraint, a knight of Arthur’s
court,
A tributary prince of Devon, one
Of that great order of the Table Round....

Geraint wins her against the detested cousin.
They wed, and she becomes the purest gem of the court
of Guinevere, her place in which is described in the
beautiful exordium of the poem. An accident, slight
perhaps for the weight it is made to carry, arouses
his jealousy, and he tries her severely by isolation
and rude offices on one of his tours; but her gentleness,
purity, and patience are proof against all, and we
part from the pair in a full and happy reconciliation,
which is described in lines of a beauty that leaves
nothing to be desired.

The treatment of Enid by her husband has appeared
to some of Mr. Tennyson’s readers to be unnatural.
It is no doubt both in itself repulsive, and foreign
to our age and country. But the brutal element
in man, which now only invades the conjugal relation
in cases where it is highly concentrated, was then
far more widely diffused, and not yet dissociated
from alternations and even habits of attachment.
Something of what we now call Eastern manners at one
time marked the treatment even of the women of the
West. Unnatural means contrary to nature, irrespectively
of time or place; but time and place explain and warrant
the treatment of Enid by Geraint.

Vivien, which follows Enid, is perhaps the least popular
of the four Books. No pleasure, we grant, can
be felt from the character either of the wily woman,
between elf and fiend, or of the aged magician, whose
love is allowed to travel whither none of his esteem
or regard can follow it: and in reading this
poem we miss the pleasure of those profound moral
harmonies, with which the rest are charged. But
we must not on these grounds proceed to the conclusion
that the poet has in this case been untrue to his
aims. For he has neither failed in power, nor
has he led our sympathies astray; and if we ask why
he should introduce us to those we cannot love, there
is something in the reply that Poetry, the mirror
of the world, cannot deal with its attractions only,
but must present some of its repulsions also, and
avail herself of the powerful assistance of its contrasts.
The example of Homer, who allows Thersites to thrust
himself upon the scene in the debates of heroes, gives
a sanction to what reason and all experience teach,
namely, the actual force of negatives in heightening
effect; and the gentle and noble characters and beautiful
combinations, which largely predominate in the other
poems, stand in far clearer and bolder relief when
we perceive the dark and baleful shadow of Vivien
lowering from between them.

Page 198

Vivien exhibits a well-sustained conflict between
the wizard and, in another sense, the witch; on one
side is the wit of woman, on the other are the endowments
of the prophet and magician, at once more and less
than those of nature. She has heard from him of
a charm, a charm of “woven paces, and of waving
hands,” which paralyses its victim for ever
and without deliverance, and her object is to extract
from him the knowledge of it as a proof of some return
for the fervid and boundless love that she pretends.
We cannot but estimate very highly the skill with
which Mr. Tennyson has secured to what seemed the weaker
vessel the ultimate mastery in the fight. Out
of the eater comes forth meat. When she seems
to lose ground with him by her slander against the
Round Table which he loved, she recovers it by making
him believe that she saw all other men, “the
knights, the Court, the King, dark in his light”:
and when in answer to her imprecation on herself a
fearful thunderbolt descends and storm rages, then,
nestling in his bosom, part in fear but more in craft,
she overcomes the last remnant of his resolution, wins
the secret she has so indefatigably wooed, and that
instant uses it to close in gloom the famous career
of the over-mastered sage.

* * * *
*

Nowhere could we more opportunely than at this point
call attention to Mr. Tennyson’s extraordinary
felicity and force in the use of metaphor and simile.
This gift appears to have grown with his years, alike
in abundance, truth, and grace. As the showers
descend from heaven to return to it in vapour, so
Mr. Tennyson’s loving observation of Nature,
and his Muse, seem to have had a compact of reciprocity
well kept on both sides. When he was young, and
when “Oenone” was first published, he
almost boasted of putting a particular kind of grasshopper
into Troas, which, as he told us in a note, was probably
not to be found there. It is a small but yet
an interesting and significant indication that, when
some years after he retouched the poem, he omitted
the note, and generalised the grasshopper. Whether
we are right or not in taking this for a sign of the
movement of his mind, there can be no doubt that his
present use of figures is both the sign and the result
of a reverence for Nature alike active, intelligent,
and refined. Sometimes applying the metaphors
of Art to Nature, he more frequently draws the materials
of his analogies from her unexhausted book, and, however
often he may call for some new and beautiful vehicle
of illustration, she seems never to withhold an answer.
With regard to this particular and very critical gift,
it seems to us that he may challenge comparison with
almost any poet either of ancient or modern times.
We have always been accustomed to look upon Ariosto
as one of the greatest among the masters of the art
of metaphor and simile; and it would be easy to quote
from him instances which in tenderness, grace, force,
or all combined, can never be surpassed. But
we have rarely seen the power subjected to a greater
trial than in the passages just quoted from Mr. Tennyson,
where metaphor lies by metaphor as thick as shells
upon their bed; yet each individually with its outline
as well drawn, its separateness as clear, its form
as true to nature, and with the most full and harmonious
contribution to the general effect.

Page 199

* * * *
*

Mr. Tennyson practises largely, and with an extraordinary
skill and power, the art of designed and limited repetitions.
They bear a considerable resemblance to those Homeric
formulae which have been so usefully remarked
by Colonel Mure—­not the formulae of constant
recurrence, which tells us who spoke and who answered,
but those which are connected with pointing moral
effects, and with ulterior purpose. These repetitions
tend at once to give more definite impressions of
character, and to make firmer and closer the whole
tissue of the poem. Thus, in the last speech
of Guinevere, she echoes back, with other ideas and
expressions, the sentiment of Arthur’s affection,
which becomes in her mouth sublime:—­

I must not scorn myself: he loves
me still:
Let no one dream but that he loves me
still.

She prays admission among the nuns, that she may follow
the pious and peaceful tenor of their life (p. 260):—­

And so wear out in almsdeed and in prayer
The sombre close of that voluptuous day
Which wrought the ruin of my lord the
King.

And it is but a debt of justice to the Guinevere of
the romancers to observe, that she loses considerably
by the marked transposition which Mr. Tennyson has
effected in the order of greatness between Lancelot
and Arthur. With him there is an original error
in her estimate, independently of the breach of a
positive and sacred obligation. She prefers the
inferior man; and this preference implies a rooted
ethical defect in her nature. In the romance
of Sir T. Mallory the preference she gives to Lancelot
would have been signally just, had she been free to
choose. For Lancelot is of an indescribable grandeur;
but the limit of Arthur’s character is thus
shown in certain words that he uses, and that Lancelot
never could have spoken. “Much more I am
sorrier for my good knight’s loss than for the
loss of my queen; for queens might I have enough,
but, such a fellowship of good knights shall never
be together in company.”

We began with the exordium of this great work:
we must not withhold the conclusion. We left
her praying admission to the convent—­

She said. They took her to themselves;
and she,
Still hoping, fearing, “is it yet
too late?”
Dwelt with them, till in time their Abbess
died.
Then she, for her good deeds and her pure
life,
And for the power of ministration in her,
And likewise for the high rank she had
borne,
Was chosen Abbess: there, an Abbess,
lived
For three brief years; and there, an Abbess,
pass’d
To where beyond these voices there is
peace.

Page 200

No one, we are persuaded, can read this poem without
feeling, when it ends, what may be termed the pangs
of vacancy—­of that void in heart and mind
for want of its continuance of which we are conscious
when some noble strain of music ceases, when some
great work of Raphael passes from the view, when we
lose sight of some spot connected with high associations,
or when some transcendent character upon the page of
history disappears, and the withdrawal of it is like
the withdrawal of the vital air. We have followed
the Guinevere of Mr. Tennyson through its detail,
and have extracted largely from its pages, and yet
have not a hope of having conveyed an idea of what
it really is; still we have thought that in this way
we should do it the least injustice, and we are also
convinced that even what we have shown will tend to
rouse an appetite, and that any of our readers, who
may not yet have been also Mr. Tennyson’s, will
become more eager to learn and admire it at first
hand.

We have no doubt that Mr. Tennyson has carefully considered
how far his subject is capable of fulfilling the conditions
of an epic structure. The history of Arthur is
not an epic as it stands, but neither was the Cyclic
song, of which the greatest of all epics, the “Iliad,”
handles a part. The poem of Ariosto is scarcely
an epic, nor is that of Bojardo; but it is not this
because each is too promiscuous and crowded in its
brilliant phantasmagoria to conform to the severe laws
of that lofty and inexorable class of poem? Though
the Arthurian romance be no epic, it does not follow
that no epic can be made from out of it. It is
grounded in certain leading characters, men and women,
conceived upon models of extraordinary grandeur; and
as the Laureate has evidently grasped the genuine
law which makes man and not the acts of man the base
of epic song, we should not be surprised were he hereafter
to realize the great achievement towards which he
seems to be feeling his way. There is a moral
unity and a living relationship between the four poems
before us, and the first effort of 1842 as a fifth,
which, though some considerable part of their contents
would necessarily rank as episode, establishes the
first and most essential condition of their cohesion.
The achievement of Vivien bears directly on the state
of Arthur by withdrawing his chief councillor—­the
brain, as Lancelot was the right arm, of his court;
the love of Elaine is directly associated with the
final catastrophe of the passion of Lancelot for Guinevere.
Enid lies somewhat further off the path, nor is it
for profane feet to intrude into the sanctuary, for
reviewers to advise poets in these high matters; but
while we presume nothing, we do not despair of seeing
Mr. Tennyson achieve on the basis he has chosen the
structure of a full-formed epic.

Page 201

In any case we have a cheerful hope that, if he continues
to advance upon himself as he has advanced heretofore,
nay, if he can keep the level he has gained, such
a work will be the greatest, and by far the greatest
poetical creation, that, whether in our own or in foreign
poetry, the nineteenth century has produced. In
the face of all critics, the Laureate of England has
now reached a position which at once imposes and instils
respect. They are self-constituted; but he has
won his way through the long dedication of his manful
energies, accepted and crowned by deliberate, and,
we rejoice to think, by continually growing, public
favour. He has after all, and it is not the least
nor lowest item in his praise, been the severest of
his own critics, and has not been too proud either
to learn or to unlearn in the work of maturing his
genius and building up his fame.

From his very first appearance he has had the form
and fashion of a true poet: the insight into
beauty, the perception of harmony, the faculty of
suggestion, the eye both in the physical and moral
world for motion, light, and colour, the sympathetic
and close observation of nature, the dominance of
the constructive faculty, and that rare gift the thorough
mastery and loving use of his native tongue. Many
of us, the common crowd, made of the common clay,
may be lovers of Nature, some as sincere or even as
ardent as Mr. Tennyson; but it does not follow that
even these favoured few possess the privilege that
he enjoys. To them she speaks through vague and
indeterminate impressions: for him she has a
voice of the most delicate articulation; all her images
to him are clear and definite, and he translates them
for us into that language of suggestion, emphasis,
and refined analogy which links the manifold to the
simple and the infinite to the finite. He accomplishes
for us what we should in vain attempt for ourselves,
enables the puny hand to lay hold on what is vast,
and brings even coarseness of grasp into a real contact
with what is subtle and ethereal. His turn for
metaphysical analysis is closely associated with a
deep ethical insight: and many of his verses
form sayings of so high a class that we trust they
are destined to form a permanent part of the household-words
of England.

Considering the quantity of power that Mr. Tennyson
can make available, it is a great proof of self-discipline
that he is not given to a wanton or tyrannous use
of it. An extraordinary master of diction, he
has confined himself to its severe and simple forms.
In establishing this rule of practice his natural
gift has evidently been aided by the fine English
of the old romances, and we might count upon the fingers
the cases in which he has lately deviated into the
employment of any stilted phrase, or given sanction
to a word not of the best fabric. Profuse in
the power of graphic[1] representation, he has chastened
some of his earlier groups of imagery, which were
occasionally overloaded with particulars; and in his

Page 202

later works, as has been well remarked, he has shown
himself thoroughly aware that in poetry half is greater
than the whole. That the chastity of style he
has attained is not from exhaustion of power may easily
be shown. No poet has evinced a more despotic
mastery over intractable materials, or has been more
successful in clothing what is common with the dignity
of his art. The Downs are not the best subjects
in the world for verse; but they will be remembered
with and by his descriptive line in the “Idylls”—­

Far o’er the long backs of the bushless
downs.

[1] We use the word in what we conceive to be its
only legitimate
meaning; namely, after the
manner and with the effect of painting.
It signifies the quid,
not the quale.

How becoming is the appearance of what we familiarly
term the “clod” in the “Princess”!
(p. 37)—­

Nor those horn-handled breakers of the
glebe.

Of all imaginable subjects, mathematics might seem
the most hopeless to make mention of in verse; but
they are with him

The hard-grained Muses of the cube
and square.

Thus at a single stroke he gives an image alike simple,
true, and poetical to boot, because suited to its
place and object in his verse, like the heavy Caryatides
well placed in architecture. After this, we may
less esteem the feat by which in “Godiva”
he describes the clock striking mid-day:—­

All
at once,
With twelve great shocks of sound, the
shameless noon
Was clashed and hammered from a hundred
towers.

But even the contents of a pigeon-pie are not beneath
his notice, nor yet beyond his powers of embellishment,
in “Audley Court":—­

A
pasty, costly made,

Where quail and pigeon, lark and leveret lay
Like fossils of the rock, with golden yolks
Imbedded and injellied.

What excites more surprise is that he can, without
any offence against good taste, venture to deal with
these contents even after they have entered the mouth
of the eater ("Enid,” p. 79):—­

The
brawny spearman let his cheek
Bulge with the unswallowed piece, and
turning, stared.

The delicate insight of fine taste appears to show
him with wonderful precision up to what point his
art can control and compel his materials, and from
what point the materials are in hopeless rebellion
and must be let alone. So in the “Princess”
(p. 89) we are introduced to—­

Eight daughters of the plough, stronger
than men,
Huge women blowzed with health, and wind,
and rain,
And labour.

It was absolutely necessary for him to heighten, nay,
to coarsen, the description of these masses of animated
beef, who formed the standing army of the woman-commonwealth.
Few would have obeyed this law without violating another;
but Mr. Tennyson saw that the verb was admissible,
while the adjective would have been intolerable.

Page 203

In 1842 his purging process made it evident that he
did not mean to allow his faults or weaknesses to
stint the growth and mar the exhibition of his genius.
When he published “In Memoriam” in 1850,
all readers were conscious of the progressive widening
and strengthening, but, above all, deepening of his
mind. We cannot hesitate to mark the present
volume as exhibiting another forward and upward stride,
and that by perhaps the greatest of all, in his career.
If we are required to show cause for this opinion
under any special head, we would at once point to
that which is, after all, the first among the poet’s
gifts—­the gift of conceiving and representing
human character.

Mr. Tennyson’s Arthurian essays continually
suggest to us comparisons not so much with any one
poet as a whole, but rather with many or most of the
highest poets. The music and the just and pure
modulation of his verse carry us back not only to
the fine ear of Shelley, but to Milton and to Shakespeare:
and his powers of fancy and of expression have produced
passages which, if they are excelled by that one transcendent
and ethereal poet of our nation whom we have last named,
yet could have been produced by no other English minstrel.
Our author has a right to regard his own blank verse
as highly characteristic and original: but yet
Milton has contributed to its formation, and occasionally
there is a striking resemblance in turn and diction,
while Mr. Tennyson is the more idiomatic of the two.
The chastity and moral elevation of this volume, its
essential and profound though not didactic Christianity,
are such as perhaps cannot be matched throughout the
circle of English literature in conjunction with an
equal power: and such as to recall a pattern which
we know not whether Mr. Tennyson has studied, the celestial
strain of Dante.[1] This is the more remarkable, because
he has had to tread upon the ground which must have
been slippery for any foot but his. We are far
from knowing that either Lancelot or Guinevere would
have been safe even for mature readers, were it not
for the instinctive purity of his mind and the high
skill of his management. We do not know that in
other times they have had their noble victims, whose
names have become immortal as their own.

[1] It is no reproach to say that neither Dante nor
Homer could have
been studied by Mr. Tennyson
at the time—­a very early period of his
life—­when he wrote
the lines which are allotted to them
respectively in “The
Palace of Art.”
[2] “Inferno,” c. V, v. 127.

How difficult it is to sustain the elevation of such
a subject, may be seen in the well-meant and long
popular “Jane Shore” of Rowe. How
easily this very theme may be vulgarised, is shown
in the "Chevaliers de la Table Ronde" of M.
Creuze de Lesser, who nevertheless has aimed at a
peculiar delicacy of treatment.

Page 204

But the grand poetical quality in which this volume
gives to its author a new rank and standing is the
dramatic power: the power of drawing character
and of representing action. These faculties have
not been precocious in Mr. Tennyson: but what
is more material, they have come out in great force.
He has always been fond of personal delineations,
from Claribel and Lilian down to his Ida, his Psyche,
and his Maud; but they have been of shadowy quality,
doubtful as to flesh and blood, and with eyes having
little or no speculation in them. But he is far
greater and far better when he has, as he now has,
a good raw material ready to his hand, than when he
draws only on the airy or chaotic regions of what
Carlyle calls unconditioned possibility. He is
made not so much to convert the moor into the field,
as the field into the rich and gorgeous garden.
The imperfect nisus which might be remarked
in some former works has at length reached the fulness
of dramatic energy: in the Idylls we have nothing
vague or dreamy to complain of: everything lives
and moves, in the royal strength of nature: the
fire of Prometheus has fairly caught the clay:
every figure stands clear, broad, and sharp before
us, as if it had sky for its background: and this
of small as well as great, for even the “little
novice” is projected on the canvas with the
utmost truth and vigour, and with that admirable effect
in heightening the great figure of Guinevere, which
Patroclus produces for the character of Achilles,
and (as some will have it) the modest structure of
Saint Margaret’s for the giant proportions of
Westminster Abbey. And this, we repeat, is the
crowning gift of the poet: the power of conceiving
and representing man.

We do not believe that a Milton—­or, in
other words, the writer of a “Paradise Lost”—­could
ever be so great as a Shakespeare or a Homer, because
(setting aside all other questions) his chief characters
are neither human, nor can they be legitimately founded
upon humanity; and, moreover, what he has to represent
of man is, by the very law of its being, limited in
scale and development. Here at least the saying
is a true one: Antiquitas saeculi, juventus
mundi; rendered by our poet in “The Day-dream,”

For we are ancients of the earth,
And in the morning of the times.

The Adam and Eve of Paradise exhibit to us the first
inception of our race; and neither then, nor after
their first sad lesson, could they furnish those materials
for representation, which their descendants have accumulated
in the school of their incessant and many-coloured,
but on the whole too gloomy, experience. To the
long chapters of that experience every generation
of man makes its own addition. Again we ask the
aid of Mr. Tennyson in “Locksley Hall":—­

Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing
purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with
the process of the suns.

Page 205

The substitution of law for force has indeed altered
the relations of the strong and the weak; the hardening
or cooling down of political institutions and social
traditions, the fixed and legal track instead of the
open pathless field, have removed or neutralised many
of those occasions and passages of life, which were
formerly the schools of individual character.
The genius of mechanism has vied, in the arts of both
peace and war, with the strong hand, and has well-nigh
robbed it of its place. But let us not be deceived
by that smoothness of superficies, which the social
prospect offers to the distant eye. Nearness dispels
the illusion; life is still as full of deep, of ecstatic,
of harrowing interests as it ever was. The heart
of man still beats and bounds, exults and suffers,
from causes which are only less salient and conspicuous
because they are more mixed and diversified. It
still undergoes every phase of emotion, and even,
as seems probable, with a susceptibility which has
increased and is increasing, and which has its index
and outer form in the growing delicacy and complexities
of the nervous system. Does any one believe that
ever at any time there was a greater number of deaths
referable to that comprehensive cause a broken heart?
Let none fear that this age, or any coming one, will
extinguish the material of poetry. The more reasonable
apprehension might be lest it should sap the vital
force necessary to handle that material, and mould
it into appropriate forms. To those especially,
who cherish any such apprehension, we recommend the
perusal of this volume. Of it we will say without
fear, what we would not dare to say of any other recent
work; that of itself it raises the character and the
hopes of the age and the country which have produced
it, and that its author, by his own single strength,
has made a sensible addition to the permanent wealth
of mankind.

CANON WILBERFORCE ON DARWIN

[From The Quarterly Review, July, 1860]

On the Origin of Species, by means of Natural Selection;
or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle
for Life. By CHARLES DARWIN, M.A., F.R.S.
London, 1860.

Any contribution to our Natural History literature
from the pen of Mr. C. Darwin is certain to command
attention. His scientific attainments, his insight
and carefulness as an observer, blended with no scanty
measure of imaginative sagacity, and his clear and
lively style, make all his writings unusually attractive.
His present volume on the Origin of Species
is the result of many years of observation, thought,
and speculation; and is manifestly regarded by him
as the “opus” upon which his future fame
is to rest. It is true that he announces it modestly
enough as the mere precursor of a mightier volume.
But that volume is only intended to supply the facts
which are to support the completed argument of the
present essay. In this we have a specimen-collection
of the vast accumulation; and, working from these
as the high analytical mathematician may work from
the admitted results of his conic sections, he proceeds
to deduce all the conclusions to which he wishes to
conduct his readers.

Page 206

The essay is full of Mr. Darwin’s characteristic
excellences. It is a most readable book; full
of facts in natural history, old and new, of his collecting
and of his observing; and all of these are told in
his own perspicuous language, and all thrown into
picturesque combinations, and all sparkle with the
colours of fancy and the lights of imagination.
It assumes, too, the grave proportions of a sustained
argument upon a matter of the deepest interest, not
to naturalists only, or even to men of science exclusively,
but to every one who is interested in the history
of man and of the relations of nature around him to
the history and plan of creation.

With Mr. Darwin’s “argument” we
may say in the outset that we shall have much and
grave fault to find. But this does not make us
the less disposed to admire the singular excellences
of his work; and we will seek in limine to
give our readers a few examples of these. Here,
for instance, is a beautiful illustration of the wonderful
interdependence of nature—­of the golden
chain of unsuspected relations which bind together
all the mighty web which stretches from end to end
of this full and most diversified earth. Who,
as he listened to the musical hum of the great humble-bees,
or marked their ponderous flight from flower to flower,
and watched the unpacking of their trunks for their
work of suction, would have supposed that the multiplication
or diminution of their race, or the fruitfulness and
sterility of the red clover, depend as directly on
the vigilance of our cats as do those of our well-guarded
game-preserves on the watching of our keepers?
Yet this Mr. Darwin has discovered to be literally
the case:—­

From experiments which I have lately tried,
I have found that the visits of bees are necessary
for the fertilisation of some kinds of clover; but
humble-bees alone visit the red clover (Trifolium
pratense), as other bees cannot reach the nectar.
Hence I have very little doubt, that if the whole
genus of humble-bees became extinct or very rare
in England, the heartsease and red clover would become
very rare or wholly disappear. The number of
humble-bees in any district depends in a great degree
on the number of field-mice, which destroy their
combs and nests; and Mr. H. Newman, who has long attended
to the habits of humble-bees, believes that “more
than two-thirds of them are thus destroyed all over
England.” Now the number of mice is largely
dependent, as every one knows, on the number of cats;
and Mr. Newman says, “near villages and small
towns I have found the nests of humble-bees more
numerous than elsewhere, which I attribute to the
number of cats that destroy the mice.”
Hence, it is quite credible that the presence of
a feline animal in large numbers in a district might
determine, through the intervention, first of mice,
and then of bees, the frequency of certain flowers
in that district.—­p. 74.

* * * *
*

Page 207

Now, all this is, we think, really charming writing.
We feel as we walk abroad with Mr. Darwin very much
as the favoured object of the attention of the dervise
must have felt when he had rubbed the ointment around
his eye, and had it opened to see all the jewels,
and diamonds, and emeralds, and topazes, and rubies,
which were sparkling unregarded beneath the earth,
hidden as yet from all eyes save those which the dervise
had enlightened. But here we are bound to say
our pleasure terminates; for, when we turn with Mr.
Darwin to his “argument,” we are almost
immediately at variance with him. It is as an
“argument” that the essay is put forward;
as an argument we will test it.

We can perhaps best convey to our readers a clear
view of Mr. Darwin’s chain of reasoning, and
of our objections to it, if we set before them, first,
the conclusion to which he seeks to bring them; next,
the leading propositions which he must establish in
order to make good his final inference; and then the
mode by which he endeavours to support his propositions.

The conclusion, then, to which Mr. Darwin would bring
us is, that all the various forms of vegetable and
animal life with which the globe is now peopled, or
of which we find the remains preserved in a fossil
state in the great Earth-Museum around us, which the
science of geology unlocks for our instruction, have
come down by natural succession of descent from father
to son,—­“animals from at most four
or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or less
number” (p. 484), as Mr. Darwin at first somewhat
diffidently suggests; or rather, as, growing bolder
when he has once pronounced his theory, he goes on
to suggest to us, from one single head:—­

Analogy would lead me one step further,
namely, to the belief that ALL ANIMALS and PLANTS
have descended from some one prototype. But analogy
may be a deceitful guide. Nevertheless, all
living things have much in common in their chemical
composition, their germinal vesicles, their cellular
structure, and their laws of growth and reproduction....

Therefore I shall infer from analogy that
probably all the organic beings which have ever
lived on this earth (man therefore of course included)
have descended from some one primordial form into which
life was first breathed by the Creator.—­p.
484.

This is the theory which really pervades the whole
volume. Man, beast, creeping thing, and plant
of the earth, are all the lineal and direct descendants
of some one individual ens, whose various progeny
have been simply modified by the action of natural
and ascertainable conditions into the multiform aspect
of life which we see around us. This is undoubtedly
at first sight a somewhat startling conclusion to
arrive at. To find that mosses, grasses, turnips,
oaks, worms, and flies, mites and elephants, infusoria
and whales, tadpoles of to-day and venerable saurians,
truffles and men, are all equally the lineal descendants

Page 208

of the same aboriginal common ancestor, perhaps of
the nucleated cell of some primaeval fungus, which
alone possessed the distinguishing honour of being
the “one primordial form into which life was
first breathed by the Creator “—­this,
to say the least of it, is no common discovery—­no
very expected conclusion. But we are too loyal
pupils of inductive philosophy to start back from any
conclusion by reason of its strangeness. Newton’s
patient philosophy taught him to find in the falling
apple the law which governs the silent movements of
the stars in their courses; and if Mr. Darwin can with
the same correctness of reasoning demonstrate to us
our fungular descent, we shall dismiss our pride,
and avow, with the characteristic humility of philosophy,
our unsuspected cousinship with the mushrooms,—­

Claim kindred there, and have our claim
allowed,

—­only we shall ask leave to scrutinise
carefully every step of the argument which has such
an ending, and demur if at any point of it we are
invited to substitute unlimited hypothesis for patient
observation, or the spasmodic fluttering flight of
fancy for the severe conclusions to which logical
accuracy of reasoning has led the way.

Now, the main propositions by which Mr. Darwin’s
conclusion is attained are these:—­

1. That observed and admitted variations spring
up in the course of descents from a common progenitor.

2. That many of these variations tend to an improvement
upon the parent stock.

3. That, by a continued selection of these improved
specimens as the progenitors of future stock, its
powers may be unlimitedly increased.

4. And, lastly, that there is in nature a power
continually and universally working out this selection,
and so fixing and augmenting these improvements.

Mr. Darwin’s whole theory rests upon the truth
of these propositions and crumbles utterly away if
only one of them fail him. These, therefore, we
must closely scrutinise. We will begin with the
last in our series, both because we think it the newest
and the most ingenious part of Mr. Darwin’s
whole argument, and also because, whilst we absolutely
deny the mode in which he seeks to apply the existence
of the power to help him in his argument, yet we think
that he throws great and very interesting light upon
the fact that such self-acting power does actively
and continuously work in all creation around us.

Mr. Darwin finds then the disseminating and improving
power, which he needs to account for the development
of new forms in nature, in the principle of “Natural
Selection,” which is evolved in the strife for
room to live and flourish which is evermore maintained
between themselves by all living things. One
of the most interesting parts of Mr. Darwin’s
volume is that in which he establishes this law of
natural selection; we say establishes, because—­repeating
that we differ from him totally in the limits which
he would assign to its action—­we have no
doubt of the existence or of the importance of the
law itself.

Page 209

* * * *
*

We come then to these conclusions. All the facts
presented to us in the natural world tend to show
that none of the variations produced in the fixed
forms of animal life, when seen in its most plastic
condition under domestication, give any promise of
a true transmutation of species; first, from the difficulty
of accumulating and fixing variations within the same
species; secondly, from the fact that these variations,
though most serviceable for man, have no tendency to
improve the individual beyond the standard of his
own specific type, and so to afford matter, even if
they were infinitely produced, for the supposed power
of natural selection on which to work; whilst all variations
from the mixture of species are barred by the inexorable
law of hybrid sterility. Further, the embalmed
records of 3,000 years show that there has been no
beginning of transmutation in the species of our most
familiar domesticated animals; and beyond this, that
in the countless tribes of animal life around us,
down to its lowest and most variable species, no one
has ever discovered a single instance of such transmutation
being now in prospect; no new organ has ever been known
to be developed—­no new natural instinct
to be formed—­whilst, finally, in the vast
museum of departed animal life which the strata of
the earth imbed for our examination, whilst they contain
far too complete a representation of the past to be
set aside as a mere imperfect record, yet afford no
one instance of any such change as having ever been
in progress, or give us anywhere the missing links
of the assumed chain, or the remains which would enable
now existing variations, by gradual approximations,
to shade off into unity. On what then is the new
theory based? We say it with unfeigned regret,
in dealing with such a man as Mr. Darwin, on the merest
hypothesis, supported by the most unbounded assumptions.
These are strong words, but we will give a few instances
to prove their truth:—­

All physiologists admit that the swim-bladder
is homologous or “ideally similar” in
position and structure with the lungs of the higher
vertebrate animals; hence there seems to me to be
no great difficulty in believing that natural
selection has actually converted a swim-bladder
into a lung, or organ used exclusively for respiration.—­p.
191.

I can indeed hardly doubt that
all vertebrate animals having true lungs have descended
by ordinary generation from the ancient prototype,
of which we know nothing, furnished with a floating
apparatus or swim-bladder—­p. 191.

We must be cautious

In concluding that the most different
habits of all could not graduate into each
other; that a bat, for instance, could not have
been formed by natural selection from an animal which
at first could only glide through the air.—­p.
204.

Again:—­

Page 210

I see no difficulty in supposing
that such links formerly existed, and that each
had been formed by the same steps as in the case of
the less perfectly gliding squirrels, and that each
grade of structure was useful to its possessor.
Nor can I see any insuperable difficulty in further
believing it possible that the membrane-connected
fingers and forearm of the galeopithecus might be
greatly lengthened by natural selection, and this,
as far as the organs of flight are concerned, would
convert it into a bat.—­p. 181.

For instance, a swim-bladder has apparently
been converted into an
air-breathing lung.—­p. 181.

And again:—­

The electric organs of fishes offer another
case of special difficulty: It is impossible
to conceive by what steps these wondrous organs
have been produced; but, as Owen and others have remarked,
their intimate structure closely resembles that of
common muscle; and as it has lately been shown that
rays have an organ closely analogous to the electric
apparatus, and yet do not, as Matteucci asserts, discharge
any electricity, we must own that we are far too ignorant
to argue that no transition of any kind is possible.—­pp.
192-3.

Sometimes Mr. Darwin seems for a moment to recoil
himself from this extravagant liberty of speculation,
as when he says, concerning the eye,—­

To suppose that the eye, with its inimitable
contrivances for adjusting the focus to different
distances, for admitting different amounts of light,
and for the correction of spherical and chromatic
aberration, could have been formed by natural selection,
seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible
degree.—­p. 186.

But he soon returns to his new wantonness of conjecture,
and, without the shadow of a fact, contents himself
with saying that—­

he suspects that any sensitive
nerve may be rendered sensitive to
light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations
of the air which
produce sound.—­p-187.

And in the following passage he carries this extravagance
to the highest pitch, requiring a licence for advancing
as true any theory which cannot be demonstrated to
be actually impossible:—­

If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed, which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications,
my theory would absolutely break down. But I can
find no such case.—­p. 189.

Another of these assumptions is not a little remarkable.
It suits his argument to deduce all our known varieties
of pigeons from the rock-pigeon (the Columba livia),
and this parentage is traced out, though not, we think,
to demonstration, yet with great ingenuity and patience.
But another branch of the argument would be greatly
strengthened by establishing the descent of our various
breeds of dogs with their perfect power of fertile

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inter-breeding from different natural species.
And accordingly, though every fact as to the canine
race is parallel to the facts which have been used
before to establish the common parentage of the pigeons
in Columba livia, all these are thrown over in a moment,
and Mr. Darwin, first assuming, without the shadow
of proof, that our domestic breeds are descended from
different species, proceeds calmly to argue from this,
as though it were a demonstrated certainty.

It seems to me unlikely in the
case of the dog-genus, which is
distributed in a wild state throughout
the world, that since man first
appeared one species alone should have
been domesticated.—­p. 18.

In some cases I do not doubt that
the intercrossing of species
aboriginally distinct has played an important
part in the origin of
our domestic productions.—­p.
43.

What new words are these for a loyal disciple of the
true Baconian philosophy?—­“I can
conceive”—­“It is not incredible”—­“I
do not doubt” —­“It is conceivable.”

For myself, I venture confidently
to look back thousands on thousands of generations,
and I see an animal striped like a zebra, but perhaps
otherwise very differently constructed, the common
parent of our domestic horse, whether or not it
be descended from one or more wild stocks of the
ass, hemionous, quagga, or zebra.—­p. 167.

In the name of all true philosophy we protest against
such a mode of dealing with nature, as utterly dishonourable
to all natural science, as reducing it from its present
lofty level of being one of the noblest trainers of
man’s intellect and instructors of his mind,
to being a mere idle play of the fancy, without the
basis of fact or the discipline of observation.
In the “Arabian Nights” we are not offended
as at an impossibility when Amina sprinkles her husband
with water and transforms him into a dog, but we cannot
open the august doors of the venerable temple of scientific
truth to the genii and magicians of romance. We
plead guilty to Mr. Darwin’s imputation that

the chief cause of our natural unwillingness
to admit that one species has given birth to other
and distinct species is that we are always slow
in admitting any great change of which we do not see
the intermediate steps.—­p. 481.

In this tardiness to admit great changes suggested
by the imagination, but the steps of which we cannot
see, is the true spirit of philosophy.

Analysis, says Professor Sedgwick, consists
in making experiments and observations, and in drawing
general conclusions from them by induction, and
admitting of no objections against the conclusions
but such as are taken from experiments or other
certain truths; for hypotheses are not to be
regarded in experimental philosophy.[1]

[1] “A Discourse on the Studies of the University,”
by A. Sedgwick, p.
102.

Page 212

The other solvent which Mr. Darwin most freely and,
we think, unphilosophically employs to get rid of
difficulties, is his use of time. This he shortens
or prolongs at will by the mere wave of his magician’s
rod. Thus the duration of whole epochs, during
which certain forms of animal life prevailed, is gathered
up into a point, whilst an unlimited expanse of years,
“impressing his mind with a sense of eternity,”
is suddenly interposed between that and the next series,
though geology proclaims the transition to have been
one of gentle and, it may be, swift accomplishment.
All this too is made the more startling because it
is used to meet the objections drawn from facts.
“We see none of your works,” says the
observer of nature; “we see no beginnings of
the portentous change; we see plainly beings of another
order in creation, but we find amongst them no tendencies
to these altered organisms.” “True,”
says the great magician, with a calmness no difficulty
derived from the obstinacy of facts can disturb; “true,
but remember the effect of time. Throw in a few
hundreds of millions of years more or less, and why
should not all these changes be possible, and, if
possible, why may I not assume them to be real?”

Together with this large licence of assumption we
notice in this book several instances of receiving
as facts whatever seems to bear out the theory upon
the slightest evidence, and rejecting summarily others,
merely because they are fatal to it. We grieve
to charge upon Mr. Darwin this freedom in handling
facts, but truth extorts it from us. That the
loose statements and unfounded speculations of this
book should come from the author of the monograms
on Cirripedes, and the writer, in the natural history
of the Voyage of the “Beagle,” of the paper
on the Coral Reefs, is indeed a sad warning how far
the love of a theory may seduce even a first-rate
naturalist from the very articles of his creed.

This treatment of facts is followed up by another
favourite line of argument, namely, that by this hypothesis
difficulties otherwise inextricable are solved.
Such passages abound. Take a few, selected almost
at random, to illustrate what we mean:—­

How inexplicable are these facts on the
ordinary view of creation!—­p.
436.

Such facts as the presence of peculiar
species of bats and the absence
of other mammals on oceanic islands are
utterly inexplicable on the
theory of independent acts of creation.—­pp.
477-8.

It must be admitted that these facts receive
no explanation on the
theory of creation.—­p. 478.

The inhabitants of the Cape de Verde Islands
are related to those of Africa, like those of the
Galapagos to America. I believe this grand fact
can receive no sort of explanation on the ordinary
view of independent creation.—­pp. 398-9.

Now what can be more simply reconcilable with that
theory than Mr. Darwin’s own account of the
mode in which the migration of animal life from one
distant region to another is continually accomplished?

Page 213

Take another of these suggestions:—­

It is inexplicable, on the theory of creation,
why a part developed in a very unusual manner in
any one species of a genus, and therefore, as we
may naturally infer, of great importance to the species,
should be eminently liable to variation.—­p.
474.

Why “inexplicable”? Such a liability
to variation might most naturally be expected in the
part “unusually developed,” because such
unusual development is of the nature of a monstrosity,
and monsters are always tending to relapse into likeness
to the normal type. Yet this argument is one
on which he mainly relies to establish his theory,
for he sums all up in this triumphant inference:—­

I cannot believe that a false theory would
explain, as it seems to me
that the theory of natural selection does
explain, the several large
classes of facts above specified.—­p.
480.

Now, as to all this, we deny, first, that many of
these difficulties are “inexplicable on any
other supposition.” Of the greatest of them
(128, 194) we shall have to speak before we conclude.
We will here touch only on one of those which are
continually reappearing in Mr. Darwin’s pages,
in order to illustrate his mode of dealing with them.
He finds, then, one of these “inexplicable difficulties”
in the fact, that the young of the blackbird, instead
of resembling the adult in the colour of its plumage,
is like the young of many other birds spotted, and
triumphantly declaring that—­

No one will suppose that the stripes on
the whelp of a lion, or the
spots on the young blackbird, are of any
use to these animals, or are
related to the conditions to which they
are exposed.—­pp. 439-40—­

he draws from them one of his strongest arguments
for this alleged community of descent. Yet what
is more certain to every observant field-naturalist
than that this alleged uselessness of colouring is
one of the greatest protections to the young bird,
imperfect in its flight, perching on every spray,
sitting unwarily on every bush through which the rays
of sunshine dapple every bough to the colour of its
own plumage, and so give it a facility of escape which
it would utterly want if it bore the marked and prominent
colours, the beauty of which the adult bird needs
to recommend him to his mate, and can safely bear with
his increased habits of vigilance and power of wing?

But, secondly, as to many of these difficulties, the
alleged solving of which is one great proof of the
truth of Mr. Darwin’s theory, we are compelled
to join issue with him on another ground, and deny
that he gives us any solution at all. Thus, for
instance, Mr. Darwin builds a most ingenious argument
on the tendency of the young of the horse, ass, zebra,
and quagga, to bear on their shoulders and on their
legs certain barred stripes. Up these bars (bars
sinister, as we think, as to any true descent of existing
animals from their fancied prototype) he mounts through

Page 214

his “thousands and thousands of generations,”
to the existence of his “common parent, otherwise
perhaps very differently constructed, but striped
like a zebra.”—­(p. 67.) “How
inexplicable,” he exclaims, “on the theory
of creation, is the occasional appearance of stripes
on the shoulder and legs of several species of the
horse genus and in their hybrids!”—­(p.
473.) He tells us that to suppose that each species
was created with a tendency “like this, is to
make the works of God a mere mockery and deception”;
and he satisfies himself that all difficulty is gone
when he refers the stripes to his hypothetical thousands
on thousands of years removed progenitor. But
how is his difficulty really affected? for why is
the striping of one species a less real difficulty
than the striping of many?

Another instance of this mode of dealing with his
subject, to which we must call the attention of our
readers, because it too often recurs, is contained
in the following question:—­

Were all the infinitely numerous kinds
of animals and plants created as eggs, or seed,
or as full grown? and, in the case of mammals, were
they created bearing the false marks of nourishment
from the mother’s womb?—­p. 483.

The difficulty here glanced at is extreme, but it
is one for the solution of which the transmutation-theory
gives no clue. It is inherent in the idea of
the creation of beings, which are to reproduce their
like by natural succession; for, in such a world,
place the first beginning where you will, that beginning
must contain the apparent history of a past,
which existed only in the mind of the Creator.
If, with Mr. Darwin, to escape the difficulty of supposing
the first man at his creation to possess in that framework
of his body “false marks of nourishment from
his mother’s womb,” with Mr. Darwin you
consider him to have been an improved ape, you only
carry the difficulty up from the first man to the
first ape; if, with Mr. Darwin, in violation of all
observation, you break the barrier between the classes
of vegetable and animal life, and suppose every animal
to be an “improved” vegetable, you do
but carry your difficulty with you into the vegetable
world; for, how could there be seeds if there had
been no plants to seed them? and if you carry up your
thoughts through the vista of the Darwinian eternity
up to the primaeval fungus, still the primaeval fungus
must have had a humus, from which to draw into its
venerable vessels the nourishment of its archetypal
existence, and that humus must itself be a “false
mark” of a pre-existing vegetation.

We have dwelt a little upon this, because it is by
such seeming solutions of difficulties as that which
this passage supplies that the transmutationist endeavours
to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and
speculation.

Page 215

There are no parts of Mr. Darwin’s ingenious
book in which he gives the reins more completely to
his fancy than where he deals with the improvement
of instinct by his principle of natural selection.
We need but instance his assumption, without a fact
on which to build it, that the marvellous skill of
the honey-bee in constructing its cells is thus obtained,
and the slave-making habits of the Formica Polyerges
thus formed. There seems to be no limit here
to the exuberance of his fancy, and we cannot but
think that we detect one of those hints by which Mr.
Darwin indicates the application of his system from
the lower animals to man himself, when he dwells so
pointedly upon the fact that it is always the black
ant which is enslaved by his other coloured and more
fortunate brethren. “The slaves are black!”
We believe that, if we had Mr. Darwin in the witness-box,
and could subject him to a moderate cross-examination,
we should find that he believed that the tendency of
the lighter-coloured races of mankind to prosecute
the negro slave-trade was really a remains, in their
more favoured condition, of the “extraordinary
and odious instinct” which had possessed them
before they had been “improved by natural selection”
from Formica Polyerges into Homo. This at least
is very much the way in which (p. 479) he slips in
quite incidentally the true identity of man with the
horse, the bat, and the porpoise:—­

The framework of bones being the same
in the hand of a man, wing of a bat, fin of a porpoise,
and leg of the horse, the same number of vertebrae
forming the neck of the giraffe and of the elephant,
and innumerable other such facts, at once explain
themselves on the theory of descent with slow and
slight successive modifications.—­p. 479.

Such assumptions as these, we once more repeat, are
most dishonourable and injurious to science; and though,
out of respect to Mr. Darwin’s high character
and to the tone of his work, we have felt it right
to weigh the “argument” again set by him
before us in the simple scales of logical examination,
yet we must remind him that the view is not a new
one, and that it has already been treated with admirable
humour when propounded by another of his name and
of his lineage. We do not think that, with all
his matchless ingenuity, Mr. Darwin has found any
instance which so well illustrates his own theory of
the improved descendant under the elevating influences
of natural selection exterminating the progenitor
whose specialities he has exaggerated as he himself
affords us in this work. For if we go back two
generations we find the ingenious grandsire of the
author of the Origin of Species speculating
on the same subject, and almost in the same manner
with his more daring descendant.

* * * *
*

Page 216

Our readers will not have failed to notice that we
have objected to the views with which we have been
dealing solely on scientific grounds. We have
done so from our fixed conviction that it is thus that
the truth or falsehood of such arguments should be
tried. We have no sympathy with those who object
to any facts or alleged facts in nature, or to any
inference logically deduced from them, because they
believe them to contradict what it appears to them
is taught by Revelation. We think that all such
objections savour of a timidity which is really inconsistent
with a firm and well-instructed faith:—­

“Let us for a moment,” profoundly
remarks Professor Sedgwick, “suppose that
there are some religious difficulties in the conclusions
of geology. How, then, are we to solve them?
Not by making a world after a pattern of our own—­not
by shifting and shuffling the solid strata of the
earth, and then dealing them out in such a way as to
play the game of an ignorant or dishonest hypothesis—­not
by shutting our eyes to facts, or denying the evidence
of our senses—­but by patient investigation,
carried on in the sincere love of truth, and by learning
to reject every consequence not warranted by physical
evidence."[1]

He who is as sure as he is of his own existence that
the God of Truth is at once the God of Nature and
the God of Revelation, cannot believe it to be possible
that His voice in either, rightly understood, can differ,
or deceive His creatures. To oppose facts in the
natural world because they seem to oppose Revelation,
or to humour them so as to compel them to speak its
voice, is, he knows, but another form of the ever-ready
feebleminded dishonesty of lying for God, and trying
by fraud or falsehood to do the work of the God of
truth. It is with another and a nobler spirit
that the true believer walks amongst the works of nature.
The words graven on the everlasting rocks are the words
of God, and they are graven by His hand. No more
can they contradict His Word written in His book,
than could the words of the old covenant graven by
His hand on the stony tables contradict the writings
of His hand in the volume of the new dispensation.
There may be to man difficulty in reconciling all
the utterances of the two voices. But what of
that? He has learned already that here he knows
only in part, and that the day of reconciling all
apparent contradictions between what must agree is
nigh at hand. He rests his mind in perfect quietness
on this assurance, and rejoices in the gift of light
without a misgiving as to what it may discover:—­

“A man of deep thought and great
practical wisdom,” says Sedgwick,[2] “one
whose piety and benevolence have for many years been
shining before the world, and of whose sincerity
no scoffer (of whatever school) will dare to start
a doubt, recorded his opinion in the great assembly
of the men of science who during the past year were
gathered from every corner of the Empire within

Page 217

the walls of this University, ’that Christianity
had everything to hope and nothing to fear from the
advancement of philosophy.’"[3]

[1] “A Discourse on the Studies of the University,”
p. 149. [2] Ibid., p. 153. [3] Speech of Dr. Chalmers
at the Meeting of the British Association
for the Advancement of Science,
June, 1833.

This is as truly the spirit of Christianity as it
is that of philosophy. Few things have more deeply
injured the cause of religion than the busy fussy
energy with which men, narrow and feeble alike in faith
and in science, have bustled forth to reconcile all
new discoveries in physics with the word of inspiration.
For it continually happens that some larger collection
of facts, or some wider view of the phenomena of nature,
alter the whole philosophic scheme; whilst Revelation
has been committed to declare an absolute agreement
with what turns out after all to have been a misconception
or an error. We cannot, therefore, consent to
test the truth of natural science by the Word of Revelation.
But this does not make it the less important to point
out on scientific grounds scientific errors, when
those errors tend to limit God’s glory in creation,
or to gainsay the revealed relations of that creation
to Himself. To both these classes of error, though,
we doubt not, quite unintentionally on his part, we
think that Mr. Darwin’s speculations directly
tend.

Mr. Darwin writes as a Christian, and we doubt not
that he is one. We do not for a moment believe
him to be one of those who retain in some corner of
their hearts a secret unbelief which they dare not
vent; and we therefore pray him to consider well the
grounds on which we brand his speculations with the
charge of such a tendency. First, then, he not
obscurely declares that he applies his scheme of the
action of the principle of natural selection to MAN
himself, as well as to the animals around him.
Now, we must say at once, and openly, that such a notion
is absolutely incompatible not only with single expressions
in the word of God on that subject of natural science
with which it is not immediately concerned, but, which
in our judgment is of far more importance, with the
whole representation of that moral and spiritual condition
of man which is its proper subject-matter. Man’s
derived supremacy over the earth; man’s power
of articulate speech; man’s gift of reason; man’s
free-will and responsibility; man’s fall and
man’s redemption; the incarnation of the Eternal
Son; the indwelling of the Eternal Spirit,—­
all are equally and utterly irreconcilable with the
degrading notion of the brute origin of him who was
created in the image of God, and redeemed by the Eternal
Son assuming to himself his nature. Equally inconsistent,
too, not with any passing expressions, but with the
whole scheme of God’s dealings with man as recorded
in His word, is Mr. Darwin’s daring notion of
man’s further development into some unknown
extent of powers, and shape, and size, through natural

Page 218

selection acting through that long vista of ages which
he casts mistily over the earth upon the most favoured
individuals of his species. We care not in these
pages to push the argument further. We have done
enough for our purpose in thus succinctly intimating
its course. If any of our readers doubt what
must be the result of such speculations carried to
their logical and legitimate conclusion, let them
turn to the pages of Oken, and see for themselves
the end of that path the opening of which is decked
out in these pages with the bright hues and seemingly
innocent deductions of the transmutation-theory.

Nor can we doubt, secondly, that this view, which
thus contradicts the revealed relation of creation
to its Creator, is equally inconsistent with the fullness
of His glory. It is, in truth, an ingenious theory
for diffusing throughout creation the working and
so the personality of the Creator. And thus,
however unconsciously to him who holds them, such
views really tend inevitably to banish from the mind
most of the peculiar attributes of the Almighty.

How, asks Mr. Darwin, can we possibly account for
the manifest plan, order, and arrangement which pervade
creation, except we allow to it this self-developing
power through modified descent?

As Milne-Edwards has well expressed it,
Nature is prodigal in variety, but niggard in innovation.
Why, on the theory of creation, should this be so?
Why should all the parts and organs of many independent
beings, each supposed to have been separately created
for its proper place in nature, be so commonly linked
together by graduated steps? Why should not
Nature have taken a leap from structure to structure?—­p.
194.

And again:—­

It is a truly wonderful fact—­the
wonder of which we are apt to overlook from familiarity—­that
all animals and plants throughout all time and space
should be related to each other in group subordinate
to group, in the manner which we everywhere behold,
namely, varieties of the same species most closely
related together, species of the same genus less
closely and unequally related together, forming sections
and sub-genera, species of distinct genera much less
closely related, and genera related in different
degrees, forming sub-families, families, orders,
sub-classes, and classes.—­pp. 128-9.

How can we account for all this? By the simplest
and yet the most comprehensive answer. By declaring
the stupendous fact that all creation is the transcript
in matter of ideas eternally existing in the mind of
the Most High—­that order in the utmost perfectness
of its relation pervades His works, because it exists
as in its centre and highest fountain-head in Him
the Lord of all. Here is the true account of the
fact which has so utterly misled shallow observers,
that Man himself, the Prince and Head of this creation,
passes in the earlier stages of his being through
phases of existence closely analogous, so far as his

Page 219

earthly tabernacle is concerned, to those in which
the lower animals ever remain. At that point
of being the development of the protozoa is arrested.
Through it the embryo of their chief passes to the
perfection of his earthly frame. But the types
of those lower forms of being must be found in the
animals which never advance beyond them—­not
in man for whom they are but the foundation for an
after-development; whilst he too, Creation’s
crown and perfection, thus bears witness in his own
frame to the law of order which pervades the universe.

In like manner could we answer every other question
as to which Mr. Darwin thinks all oracles are dumb
unless they speak his speculation. He is, for
instance, more than once troubled by what he considers
imperfections in Nature’s work. “If,”
he says, “our reason leads us to admire with
enthusiasm a multitude of inimitable contrivances in
Nature, this same reason tells us that some other
contrivances are less perfect.”

Nor ought we to marvel if all the contrivances
in nature be not, as far as we can judge, absolutely
perfect; and if some of them be abhorrent to our
idea of fitness. We need not marvel at the sting
of the bee causing the bee’s own death; at
drones being produced in such vast numbers for one
single act, and with the great majority slaughtered
by their sterile sisters; at the astonishing waste
of pollen by our fir-trees; at the instinctive hatred
of the queen-bee for her own fertile daughters;
at ichneumonidae feeding within the live bodies
of caterpillars; and at other such cases. The
wonder indeed is, on the theory of natural selection,
that more cases of the want of absolute perfection
have not been observed.—­p. 472.

We think that the real temper of this whole speculation
as to nature itself may be read in these few lines.
It is a dishonouring view of nature.

That reverence for the work of God’s hands with
which a true belief in the All-wise Worker fills the
believer’s heart is at the root of all great
physical discovery; it is the basis of philosophy.
He who would see the venerable features of Nature
must not seek with the rudeness of a licensed roysterer
violently to unmask her countenance; but must wait
as a learner for her willing unveiling. There
was more of the true temper of philosophy in the poetic
fiction of the Pan-ic shriek, than in the atheistic
speculations of Lucretius. But this temper must
beset those who do in effect banish God from nature.
And so Mr. Darwin not only finds in it these bungling
contrivances which his own greater skill could amend,
but he stands aghast before its mightier phenomena.
The presence of death and famine seems to him inconceivable
on the ordinary idea of creation; and he looks almost
aghast at them until reconciled to their presence
by his own theory that “a ratio of increase so
high as to lead to a struggle for life, and as a consequence
to natural selection entailing divergence of character
and the extinction of less improved forms, is decidedly
followed by the most exalted object which we are capable
of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher
animals” (p. 490). But we can give him
a simpler solution still for the presence of these
strange forms of imperfection and suffering amongst
the works of God.

Page 220

We can tell him of the strong shudder which ran through
all this world when its head and ruler fell.
When he asks concerning the infinite variety of these
multiplied works which are set in such an orderly
unity, and run up into man as their reasonable head,
we can tell him of the exuberance of God’s goodness
and remind him of the deep philosophy which lies in
those simple words—­“All thy works
praise Thee, O God, and thy saints give thanks unto
Thee.” For it is one office of redeemed
man to collect the inarticulate praises of the material
creation, and pay them with conscious homage into
the treasury of the supreme Lord.

* * * *
*

It is by putting restraint upon fancy that science
is made the true trainer of our intellect:—­

“A study of the Newtonian philosophy,”
says Sedgwick, “as affecting our moral powers
and capacities, does not terminate in mere negations.
It teaches us to see the finger of God in all things
animate and inaminate [Transcriber’s note:
sic], and gives us an exalted conception of His
attributes, placing before us the clearest proof of
their reality; and so prepares, or ought to prepare,
the mind for the reception of that higher illumination
which brings the rebellious faculties into obedience
to the Divine will.”—­Studies of
the University, p. 14.

It is by our deep conviction of the truth and importance
of this view for the scientific mind of England that
we have been led to treat at so much length Mr. Darwin’s
speculation. The contrast between the sober,
patient, philosophical courage of our home philosophy,
and the writings of Lamarck and his followers and
predecessors, of MM. Demaillet, Bory de Saint
Vincent, Virey, and Oken,[1] is indeed most wonderful;
and it is greatly owing to the noble tone which has
been given by those great men whose words we have
quoted to the school of British science. That
Mr. Darwin should have wandered from this broad highway
of nature’s works into the jungle of fanciful
assumption is no small evil. We trust that he
is mistaken in believing that he may count Sir C. Lyell
as one of his converts. We know indeed the strength
of the temptations which he can bring to bear upon
his geological brother. The Lyellian hypothesis,
itself not free from some of Mr. Darwin’s faults,
stands eminently in need for its own support of some
such new scheme of physical life as that propounded
here. Yet no man has been more distinct and more
logical in the denial of the transmutation of species
than Sir C. Lyell, and that not in the infancy of
his scientific life, but in its full vigour and maturity.

[1] It may be worth while to exhibit to our readers
a few of Dr. Oken’s
postulates or arguments as
specimens of his views:—­
I wrote the first
edition of 1810 in a kind of inspiration.
4. Spirit
is the motion of mathematical ideas.
10. Physio-philosphy
[Transcriber’s note: sic] has to ... pourtray

Page 221

the first period
of the world’s development from nothing; how
the
elements and heavenly
bodies originated; in what method by
self-evolution
into higher and manifold forms they separated into
minerals, became
finally organic, and in man attained
self-consciousness.
42. The mathematical
monad is eternal.
43. The eternal
is one and the same with the zero of mathematics.

Sir C. Lyell devotes the 33rd to the 36th chapter
of his “Principles of Geology” to an examination
of this question. He gives a clear account of
the mode in which Lamarck supported his belief of the
transmutation of species; he interrupts the author’s
argument to observe that “no positive fact is
cited to exemplify the substitution of some entirely
new sense, faculty, or organ—­because
no examples were to be found”; and remarks that
when Lamarck talks of “the effects of internal
sentiment,” etc., as causes whereby animals
and plants may acquire new organs, he substitutes
names for things, and with a disregard to the strict
rules of induction, resorts to fictions.

He shows the fallacy of Lamarck’s reasoning,
and by anticipation confutes the whole theory of Mr.
Darwin, when gathering clearly up into a few heads
the recapitulation of the whole argument in favour
of the reality of species in nature. He urges:—­[Transcriber’s
note: numbering in original]

1. That there is a capacity in all species to
accommodate themselves to a certain extent to a change
of external circumstances.

4. The entire variation from the original type
... may usually be effected in a brief period of time,
after which no further deviation can be obtained.

5. The intermixing distinct species is guarded
against by the sterility of the mule offspring.

6. It appears that species have a real existence
in nature, and that each was endowed at the time of
its creation with the attributes and organization
by which it is now distinguished.[1]

[1] “Principles of Geology,” edit. 1853.

We trust that Sir C. Lyell abides still by these truly
philosophical principles; and that with his help and
with that of his brethren this flimsy speculation
may be as completely put down as was what in spite
of all denials we must venture to call its twin though
less-instructed brother, the “Vestiges of Creation.”
In so doing they will assuredly provide for the strength
and continually growing progress of British science.

Indeed, not only do all laws for the study of nature
vanish when the great principle of order pervading
and regulating all her processes is given up, but
all that imparts the deepest interest in the investigation
of her wonders will have departed too. Under such
influences a man soon goes back to the marvelling
stare of childhood at the centaurs and hippogriffs
of fancy, or if he is of a philosophic turn, he comes
like Oken to write a scheme of creation under “a

Page 222

sort of inspiration”; but it is the frenzied
inspiration of the inhaler of mephitic gas. The
whole world of nature is laid for such a man under
a fantastic law of glamour, and he becomes capable
of believing anything: to him it is just as probable
that Dr. Livingstone will find the next tribe of negroes
with their heads growing under their arms as fixed
on the summit of the cervical vertebrae; and he is
able, with a continually growing neglect of all the
facts around him, with equal confidence and equal delusion,
to look back to any past and to look on to any future.

ON CARDINAL NEWMAN

[From The Quarterly Review, October, 1864]

Apologia pro Vita sua. By JOHN HENRY NEWMAN,
D.D.

Few books have been published of late years which
combine more distinct elements of interest than the
“Apologia” of Dr. Newman. As an autobiography,
in the highest sense of that word, as the portraiture,
that is, and record of what the man was, irrespective
of those common accidents of humanity which too often
load the biographer’s pages, it is eminently
dramatic. To produce such a portrait was the end
which the writer proposed to himself, and which he
has achieved with a rare fidelity and completeness.
Hardly do the “Confessions of St. Augustine”
more vividly reproduce the old African Bishop before
successive generations in all the greatness and struggles
of his life than do these pages the very inner being
of this remarkable man—­“the living
intelligence,” as he describes it, “by
which I write, and argue, and act” (p. 47).
No wonder that when he first fully recognised what
he had to do, he

shrank from both the task and the exposure
which it would entail. I must, I said, give
the true key to my whole life; I must show what I
am, that it may be seen what I am not, and that the
phantom may be extinguished which gibbers instead
of me. I wish to be known as a living man,
and not as a scarecrow which is dressed up in my clothes....
I will draw out, as far as may be, the history of my
mind; I will state the point at which I began, in
what external suggestion or accident each opinion
had its rise, how far and how they were developed
from within, how they grew, were modified, were combined,
were in collision with each other, and were changed.
Again, how I conducted myself towards them; and
how, and how far, and for how long a time, I thought
I could hold them consistently with the ecclesiastical
engagements which I had made, and with the position
which I filled.... It is not at all pleasant
for me to be egotistical nor to be criticised for
being so. It is not pleasant to reveal to high
and low, young and old, what has gone on within me
from my early years. It is not pleasant to
be giving to every shallow or flippant disputant
the advantage over me of knowing my most private thoughts,
I might even say the intercourse between myself
and my Maker. —­pp. 47-51.

Page 223

Here is the task he set himself, and the task which
he has performed. There is in these pages an
absolute revealing of the hidden life in its acting,
and its processes, which at times is almost startling,
which is everywhere of the deepest interest.
For the life thus revealed is well worthy of the pen
by which it is portrayed. Of all those who, in
these later years, have quitted the Church of England
for the Roman communion —­esteemed, honoured,
and beloved, as were many of them—­no one,
save Dr. Newman, appears to us to possess the rare
gift of undoubted genius.

That life, moreover, which anywhere and at any time
must have marked its own character on his fellows,
was cast precisely at the time and place most favourable
for stamping upon others the impress of itself.
The plate was ready to receive and to retain every
line of the image which was thrown so vividly upon
it. The history, therefore, of this life in its
shifting scenes of thought, feeling, and purpose, becomes
in fact the history of a school, a party, and a sect.
From its effect on us, who, from without, judge of
it with critical calmness, we can form some idea of
what must be its power on those who were within the
charmed ring; who were actually under the wand of
the enchanter, for whom there was music in that voice,
fascination in that eye, and habitual command in that
spare but lustrous countenance; and who can trace again
in this retrospect the colours and shadows which in
those years which fixed their destiny, passed, though
in less distinct hues, into their own lives, and made
them what they are.

Again, in another aspect, the “Apologia”
will have a special interest for most of our readers.
Almost every page of it will throw some light upon
the great controversy which has been maintained for
these three hundred years, and which now spreads itself
throughout the world, between the Anglican Church
and her oldest and greatest antagonist, the Papal
See....

The first names to which it introduces us indicate
the widely-differing influences under which was formed
that party within our Church which has acted so powerfully
and in such various directions upon its life and teaching.
They are those of Mr.—­afterwards Archbishop—­Whately
and Dr. Hawkins, afterwards and still the Provost
of Oriel College. To intercourse with both of
whom Dr. Newman attributes great results in the formation
of his own character: the first emphatically opening
his mind and teaching him to use his reason, whilst
in religious opinion he taught him the existence of
a church, and fixed in him Anti-Erastian views of
Church polity; the second being a man of most exact
mind, who through a course of severe snubbing taught
him to weigh his words and be cautious in his statements.

Page 224

To an almost unknown degree, Oriel had at that time
monopolised the active speculative intellect of Oxford.
Her fellowships being open, whilst those of other
Colleges were closed, drew to her the ablest men of
the University: whilst the nature of the examination
for her fellowships, which took no note of ordinary
University honours, and stretched boldly out beyond
inquiries as to classical and mathematical attainments
in everything which could test the dormant powers of
the candidates, had already impressed upon the Society
a distinctive character of intellectual excellence.
The late Lord Grenville used at this time to term
an Oriel Fellowship the Blue Ribbon of the University;
and, undoubtedly, the results of those examinations
have been marvellously confirmed by the event, if
we think to what an extent the mind, and opinions,
and thoughts of England have been moulded by them
who form the list of those “Orielenses,”
of whom it was said in an academic squib of the time,
with some truth, flavoured perhaps with a spice of
envy, that they were wont to enter the academic circle
“under a flourish of trumpets.” Such
a “flourish” certainly has often preceded
the entry of far lesser men than E. Coplestone, E.
Hawkins, J. Davison, J. Keble, R. Whately, T. Arnold,
E.B. Pusey, J. H. Newman, H. Froude, R. J. Wilberforce,
S. Wilberforce, G. A. Denison, &c., &c.

Into a Society leavened with such intellectual influences
as these, Dr. Newman, soon after taking his degree,
was ushered. It could at this time have borne
no distinctively devout character in its religious
aspect. Rather must it have been marked by the
opposite of this. Whately, whose powerful and
somewhat rude intellect must almost have overawed the
common room when the might of Davison had been taken
from it, was, with all his varied excellences, never
by any means an eminently devout, scarcely perhaps
an orthodox man. All his earlier writings bristle
with paradoxes, which affronted the instincts of simpler
and more believing minds. Whately, accordingly,
appears in these pages as “generous and warmhearted—­particularly
loyal to his friends” (p. 68); as teaching his
pupil “to see with my own eyes and to walk with
my own feet”; yet as exercising an influence
over him (p. 69) which, “in a higher respect
than intellectual advance, had not been satisfactory,”
under which he “was beginning to prefer intellectual
excellence to moral, was drifting in the direction
of liberalism”; a “dream” out of
which he was “rudely awakened at the end of
1827, by two great blows—­illness and bereavement”
(p. 72).

Though this change in his views is traced by Dr. Newman
to the action of these strictly personal causes of
illness and bereavement, yet other influences, we
suspect, were working strongly in the same direction.
It is plain that, so far as regards early permanent
impression on the character of his religious opinions,
the influence of Whately was calculated rather to
stir up reaction than to win a convert. “Whately’s

Page 225

mind,” he says himself (p. 68), “was too
different from mine for us to remain long on one line.”
The course of events round him impelled him in the
same direction, and furnished him with new comrades,
on whom henceforth he was to act, and who were to
react most powerfully on him. The torrent of
reform was beginning its full rush through the land;
and its turbulent waters threatened not only to drown
the old political landmarks of the Constitution, but
also to sweep away the Church of the nation.
Abhorrence of these so-called liberal opinions was
the electric current which bound together the several
minds which speedily appeared as instituting and directing
the great Oxford Church movement. Not that it
was in any sense the offspring of the old cry of “the
Church in danger.” The meaning of that
alarm was the apprehension of danger to the emoluments
or position of the Church as the established religion
in the land. From the very first the Oxford movement
pointed more to the maintenance of the Church as a
spiritual society, divinely incorporated to teach
certain doctrines, and do certain acts which none other
could do, than to the preservation of those temporal
advantages which had been conferred by the State.
From the first there was a tendency to undervalue
these external aids, which made the movement an object
of suspicion to thorough Church-and-State men.
This suspicion was repaid by the members of the new
school with a return of contempt. They believed
that in struggling for the temporal advantages of the
Establishment, men had forgotten the essential characteristics
of the Church, and had been led to barter their divine
birthright for the mess of pottage which Acts of Parliament
secured them. Thus we find Dr. Newman remembering
his early Oxford dislike of “the bigoted two-bottle
orthodox.” He records (p. 73) the characteristic
mode in which on the appearance of the first symptoms
of his “leaving the clientela” of Dr. Whately
he was punished by that rough humorist. “Whately
was considerably annoyed at me; and he took a humorous
revenge, of which he had given me due notice beforehand....
He asked a set of the least intellectual men in Oxford
to dinner, and men most fond of port; he made me one
of the party; placed me between Provost this and Principal
that, and then asked me if I was proud of my friends”
(p. 73). It is easy to conceive how he liked them.
He had, indeed, though formerly a supporter of Catholic
Emancipation, “acted with them in opposing Mr.
Peel’s re-election in 1829, on ’simple
academical grounds,’ because he thought that
a great University ought not to be bullied even by
a great Duke of Wellington” (p. 172); but he
soon parted with his friends of “two-bottle orthodoxy,”
and joined the gathering knot of men of an utterly
different temper, who “disliked the Duke’s
change of policy as dictated by liberalism” (p.
72).

Page 226

This whole company shared the feelings which even
yet, after so many years and in such altered circumstances,
break forth from Dr. Newman like the rumblings and
smoke of a long extinct volcano, in such utterances
as this: “The new Bill for the suppression
of the Irish Sees was in prospect, and had filled
my mind. I had fierce thoughts against the Liberals.
It was the success of the Liberal cause which fretted
me inwardly. I became fierce against its instruments
and its manifestations. A French vessel was at
Algiers; I would not even look at the tricolor”
(97). This was the temper of the whole band.
Most of these men appear in Dr. Newman’s pages;
and from their common earnestness and various endowments
a mighty band they were.

* * * *
*

Here then was the band which have accomplished so
much; which have failed in so much; which have added
a new party-name to our vocabulary; which have furnished
materials for every scribbling or declaiming political
Protestant, from the writer of the Durham Letter down
to Mr. Whalley and Mr. Harper; which aided so greatly
in reawakening the dormant energies of the English
Church; which carried over to the ranks of her most
deadly opponent some of the ablest and most devoted
of her sons. The language of these pages has
never varied concerning this movement. We have
always admitted its many excellences—­we
have always lamented its evils. As long ago as
in 1839, whilst we protested openly and fully against
what we termed at the time the “strange and
lamentable” publication of Mr. Froude’s
“Remains,"[1] we declared our hope that “the
publication of the Oxford Tracts was a very seasonable
and valuable contribution to the cause both of the
Church and the State.” And in 1846, even
after so many of our hopes had faded away, we yet
spoke in the same tone of “this religious movement
in our Church,” as one “from which, however
clouded be the present aspect, we doubt not that great
blessings have resulted and will result, unless we
forfeit them by neglect or wilful abuse."[2]

The history of the progress of the movement lies scattered
through these pages. All that we can collect
concerning its first intention confirms absolutely
Mr. Perceval’s Statements, 1843, that it was
begun for two leading objects: “first,
the firm and practical maintenance of the doctrine
of the apostolical succession.... secondly, the preservation
in its integrity of the Christian doctrine in our
Prayerbooks."[1] Its unity of action was shaken by
the first entrance of doubts into its leader’s
mind. His retirement from it tended directly to
break it up as an actual party. But it would
be a monstrous error to suppose that the influence
of this movement was extinguished when its conductors
were dispersed as a party. So far from it, the
system of the Church of England took in all the more
freely the elements of truth which it had all along

Page 227

been diffusing, because they were no longer scattered
abroad by the direct action of an organised party
under ostensible chiefs. Where, we may ask, is
not at this moment the effect of that movement perfectly
appreciable within our body? Look at the new-built
and restored churches of the land; look at the multiplication
of schools; the greater exactness of ritual observance;
the higher standard of clerical life, service, and
devotion; the more frequent celebrations; the cathedrals
open; the loving sisterhoods labouring, under episcopal
sanction, with the meek, active saintliness of the
Church’s purest time; look—­above
all, perhaps—­at the raised tone of devotion
and doctrine amongst us, and see in all these that
the movement did not die, but rather flourished with
a new vigour when the party of the movement was so
greatly broken up. It is surely one of the strangest
objections which can be urged against a living spiritual
body, that the loss of many of its foremost sons still
left its vital strength unimpaired. Yet this was
Dr. Newman’s objection, and his witness, fourteen
years ago, when he complained of the Church of England,
that though it had given “a hundred educated
men to the Catholic Church, yet the huge creature from
which they went forth showed no consciousness of its
loss, but shook itself, and went about its work as
of old time."[2]

[1] “Collection of Papers connected with the
Theological Movement of
1833.” By the Hon.
and Rev. A.P. Perceval. 1843. Second Edition.
[2] “Lectures on Anglican Difficulties,”
p. 9.

As the unity of the party was broken up, the fire
which had burned hitherto in but a single beacon was
scattered upon a thousand hills. Nevertheless,
the first breaking up of the party was eminently disheartening
to its living members. But it was not by external
violence that it was broken, but by the development
within itself of a distinctive Romeward bias.
Dr. Newman lays his hand upon a particular epoch in
its progress, at which, he says, it was crossed by
a new set of men, who imparted to it that leaning
to Romanism which ever after perceptibly beset it.
“A new school of thought was rising, as is usual
in such movements, and was sweeping the original party
of the movement aside, and was taking its place”
(p. 277). This is a curious instance of self-delusion.
He was, as we maintain, throughout, the Romanising
element in the whole movement. But for him it
might have continued, as its other great chiefs still
continue, the ornament and strength of the English
Church. These younger men, to whom he attributes
the change, were, in fact, the minds whom he had consciously
or unconsciously fashioned and biassed. Some
of them, as is ever the case, had outrun their leader.
Some of them were now, in their sensitive spiritual
organism, catching the varying outline of the great
leader whom they almost worshipped, and beginning
at once to give back his own altering image.
Instead of seeing in their changing minds this reflection

Page 228

of himself, he dwelt upon it as an original element,
and read in its presence an indication of its being
the will of God that the stream should turn its flow
towards the gulf to which he himself had unawares,
it may be, directed its waters. Those who remember
how at this time he was followed will know how easily
such a result might follow his own incipient change.
Those who can still remember how many often involuntarily
caught his peculiar intonation—­so distinctively
singular, and therefore so attractive in himself and
so repulsive in his copyists —­will understand
how the altering fashion of the leader’s thoughts
was appropriated with the same unconscious fidelity.

One other cause acted powerfully on him and on them
to give this bias to the movement, and that was the
bitterness and invectives of the Liberal party.
Dr. Newman repeatedly reminds us that it was the Liberals
who drove him from Oxford. The four tutors—­the
after course of one of whom, at least, was destined
to display so remarkable a Nemesis—­and the
pack who followed them turned by their ceaseless baying
the noble hart who led the rest towards this evil
covert. He and they heard incessantly that they
were Papists in disguise: men dishonoured by professing
one thing and holding another; until they began to
doubt their own fidelity, and in that doubt was death.
Nor was this all. The Liberals ever (as is their
wont), most illiberal to those who differ from them,
began to use direct academic persecution; until, in
self-distrust and very weariness, the great soul began
to abandon the warfare it had waged inwardly against
its own inclinations and the fascinations of its enemy,
and to yield the first defences to the foe. It
will remain written, as Dr. Newman’s deliberate
judgment, that it was the Liberals who forced him
from Oxford. How far, if he had not taken that
step, he might have again shaken off the errors which
were growing on him—­how far therefore in
driving him from Oxford they drove him finally to Rome—­man
can never know.

In the new light thrown upon it from the pages of
the “Apologia,” we see with more distinctness
than was ever shown before, how greatly this tendency
to Rome, which at last led astray so many of the masters
of the party, was infused into it by the single influence
of Dr. Newman himself. We do not believe that,
in spite of his startling speeches, the bias towards
Rome was at all as strong even in H. Froude himself.
Let his last letter witness for him:—­“If,”
he says, “I was to assign my reasons for belonging
to the Church of England in preference to any other
religious community, it would be simply this, that
she has retained an apostolical clergy, and enacts
no sinful terms of communion; whereas, on the other
hand, the Romanists, though retaining an apostolical
clergy, do exact sinful terms of communion."[1] This
was the tone of the movement until it was changed
in Dr. Newman. We believe that in tracing this
out we shall be using these pages entirely as their

Page 229

author intended them to be used. They were meant
to exhibit to his countrymen the whole secret of his
moral and spiritual anatomy; they were intended to
prove that he was altogether free from that foul and
disgraceful taint of innate dishonesty, the unspoken
suspicion of which in so many quarters had so long
troubled him; the open utterance of which, from the
lips of a popular and respectable writer, was so absolutely
intolerable to him. From that imputation it is
but bare justice to say he does thoroughly clear himself.
The post-mortem examination of his life is complete;
the hand which guided the dissecting-knife has trembled
nowhere, nor shrunk from any incision. All lies
perfectly open, and the foul taint is nowhere.
And yet, looking back with the writer on the changes
which this strange narrative records, from his subscribing,
in 1828, towards the first start of the “Record”
newspaper to his receiving on the 9th of October, 1845,
at Littlemore, the “remarkable-looking man,
evidently a foreigner, shabbily dressed in black,"[2]
who received him into the Papal Communion, we see
abundant reason, even without the action of that prevalent
suspicion of secret dishonesty somewhere, which in
English minds inevitably connects itself with the
spread of Popery, for the widely-diffused impression
of that being true which it is so pleasant to find
unfounded.

From first to last these pages exhibit the habit of
Dr. Newman’s mind as eminently subjective.
It might almost be described as the exact opposite
of that of S. Athanasius: with a like all-engrossing
love for truth; with ecclesiastical habits often strangely
similar; with cognate gifts of the imperishable inheritance
of genius, the contradiction here is almost absolute.
The abstract proposition, the rightly-balanced proposition,
is everything to the Eastern, it is well-nigh nothing
to the English Divine. When led by circumstances
to embark in the close examination of Dogma, as in
his “History of the Arians,” his Nazarite
locks of strength appear to have been shorn, and the
giant, at whose might we have been marvelling, becomes
as any other man. The dogmatic portion of this
work is poor and tame; it is only when the writer
escapes from dogma into the dramatic representation
of the actors in the strife that his powers reappear.
For abstract truth it is true to us that he has no
engrossing affection: his strength lay in his
own apprehension of it, in his power of defending
it when once it had been so apprehended and had become
engrafted into him; and it is to this as made one
with himself, and to his own inward life as fed and
nourished by it, that he perpetually reverts.

Page 230

All this is the more remarkable because he conceives
himself to have been, even from early youth, peculiarly
devoted to dogma in the abstract; he returns continually
to this idea, confounding, as we venture to conceive,
his estimate of the effect of truth when he received
it, on himself, with truth as it exists in the abstract.
And as this affected him in regard to dogma, so it
reached to his relations to every part of the Church
around him. It led him to gather up in a dangerous
degree, into the person of his “own Bishop,”
the deference due to the whole order. “I
did not care much for the Bench of Bishops, nor should
I have cared much for a Provincial Council....
All these matters seemed to me to be jure ecclesiastico;
but what to me was jure divino was the voice of my
Bishop in his own person. My own Bishop was my
Pope.”—­(p. 123.) His intense individuality
had substituted the personal bond to the individual
for the general bond to the collective holders of
the office: and so when the strain became violent
it snapped at once. This doubtless natural disposition
seems to have been developed, and perhaps permanently
fixed, as the law of his intellectual and spiritual
being, by the peculiarities of his early religious
training. Educated in what is called the “Evangelical”
school, early and consciously converted, and deriving
his first religious tone, in great measure, from the
vehement but misled Calvinism, of which Thomas Scott,
of Aston Sandford, was one of the ablest and most
robust specimens, he was early taught to appreciate,
and even to judge of, all external truth mainly in
its ascertainable bearings on his own religious experience.
In many a man the effect of this teaching is to fix
him for life in a hard, narrow, and exclusive school
of religious thought and feeling, in which he lives
and dies profoundly satisfied with himself and his
co-religionists, and quite hopeless of salvation for
any beyond the immediate pale in which his own Shibboleth
is pronounced with the exactest nicety of articulation.
But Dr. Newman’s mind was framed upon a wholly
different idea, and the results were proportionally
dissimilar. With the introvertive tendency which
we have ascribed to him, was joined a most subtle
and speculative intellect, and an ambitious temper.
The “Apologia” is the history of the practical
working out of those various conditions. His
hold upon any truth external to and separate from
himself, was so feeble when placed in comparison with
his perception of what was passing within himself,
that the external truth was always liable to corrections
which would make its essential elements harmonize
with what was occurring within his own intellectual
or spiritual being. We think that we can distinctly
trace in these pages a twofold consequence from all
this: first, an inexhaustible mutability in his
views on all subjects; and secondly, a continually
recurring temptation to entire scepticism as to everything
external to himself. Every page gives illustrations

Page 231

of the first of these. He votes for what was called
Catholic Emancipation, and is drifting into the ranks
of liberalism. But the external idea of liberty
is very soon metamorphosed, in his view, from the
figure of an angel of light into that of a spirit of
darkness; first, by his academical feeling that a
great University ought not to be bullied even by a
great Duke, and then by the altered temper of his own
feelings, as they are played upon by the alternate
vibrations of the gibes of “Hurrell Froude,”
and the deep tones of Mr. Keble’s ministrelsy.

The history of his religious alternations is in exact
keeping with all this. At every separate stage
of his course, he constructs for himself a tabernacle
in which for a while he rests. This process he
repeats with an incessant simplicity of renewed commencements,
which is almost like the blind acting of instinct
leading the insect, which is conscious of its coming
change, to spin afresh and afresh its ever-broken cocoon.
He is at one time an Anglo-Catholic, and sees Antichrist
in Rome; he falls back upon the Via Media—­that
breaks down, and left him, he says (p. 211), “very
nearly a pure Protestant”; and again he has a
“new theory made expressly for the occasion,
and is pleased with his new view” (p. 269);
he then rests in “Samaria” before he finds
his way over to Rome. For the time every one
of these transient tabernacles seems to accomplish
its purpose. He finds certain repose for his spirit.
Whilst sheltered by it, all the great unutterable
phenomena of the external world are viewed by him
in relation to himself and to his home of present
rest. The gourd has grown up in a night, and shelters
him by its short-lived shadow from the tyrannous rays
of the sunshine. But some sudden irresistible
change in his own inward preceptions alters everything.
The idea shoots across his mind that the English Church
is in the position of the Monophysite heretics of
the fifth century (p. 209). At once all his views
of truth are changed. He moves on to a new position;
pitches anew his tent; builds himself up a new theory;
and finds the altitudes of the stars above him, and
the very forms of the heavenly constellations, change
with the change of his earthly habitation.

* * * *
*

In October the final step is taken, and in the succeeding
January the mournful history is closed in the following
most touching words:—­

Jan. 20, 1846.—­You may think
how lonely I am. Obliviscere populum tuum et
domum patris tui, has been in my ears for the last
twelve hours. I realize more that we are leaving
Littlemore, and it is like going on the open sea.

I left Oxford for good on Monday, February
23, 1846. On the Saturday and Sunday before,
I was in my house at Littlemore simply by myself,
as I had been for the first day or two when I had
originally taken possession of it. I slept
on Sunday night at my dear friend’s, Mr. Johnson’s,

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at the Observatory. Various friends came to see
the last of me—­Mr. Copeland, Mr. Church,
Mr. Buckle, Mr. Pattison, and Mr. Lewis. Dr.
Pusey, too, came up to take leave of me; and I called
on Dr. Ogle, one of my very oldest friends, for
he was my private tutor when I was an undergraduate.
In him I took leave of my first College, Trinity,
which was so dear to me, and which held on its foundation
so many who have been kind to me, both when I was
a boy and all through my Oxford life. Trinity
had never been unkind to me. There used to be
much snapdragon growing on the walls opposite my
freshman’s rooms there, and I had for years
taken it as the emblem of my own perpetual residence,
even unto death, in my University.

On the morning of the 23rd I left the
Observatory. I have never seen
Oxford since, excepting its spires, as
they are seen from the railway.

What an exceeding sadness is gathered up in these
words! And yet the impress of this time left
upon some of Dr. Newman’s writings seems, like
the ruin which records what was the violence of the
throes of the long-passed earthquake, even still more
indicative of the terrible character of the struggle
through which at this time he passed. We have
seen how keenly he felt the suspicious intrusions upon
his privacy which haunted his last years in the Church
of England. But in “Loss and Gain”
there is a yet more expressive exhibition of the extremity
of that suffering. He denies as “utterly
untrue” the common belief that he “introduced
friends or partisans into the tale”; and of course
he is to be implicitly believed. And yet ONE
there is whom no one who reads the pages can for a
moment doubt is there, and that is Dr. Newman himself.
The weary, unresting, hunted condition of the leading
figure in the tale, with all its accompaniment of
keen, flashing wit, always seemed to us the history
of those days when a well-meant but impertinent series
of religious intrusions was well-nigh driving the
wise man mad.

We have followed out these steps thus in detail, not
only because of their intense interest as an autobiography,
but also because the narrative itself seems to throw
the strongest possible light on the mainly-important
question how far this defection of one of her greatest
sons does really tend to weaken the argumentative position
of the English Church in her strife with Rome.
What has been said already will suffice to prove that
in our opinion no such consequence can justly follow
from it. We acknowledge freely the greatness of
the individual loss. But the causes of that defection
are, we think, clearly shown to have been the peculiarities
of the individual, not the weakness of the side which
he abandoned. His steps mark no path to any other.
He sprang clear over the guarding walls of the sheepfold,
and opened no way through them for other wanderers.
Men may have left the Church of England because their
leader left it; but they could not leave it as he

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left it, or because of his reasons for leaving it.
In truth, he appears never to have occupied a thoroughly
real Church-of-England position. He was at first,
by education and private judgment, a Calvinistic Puritan;
he became dissatisfied with the coldness and barrenness
of this theory, and set about finding a new position
for himself, and in so doing he skipped over true,
sound English Churchmanship into a course of feeling
and thought allied with and leading on to Rome.
Even the hindrances which so long held him back can
scarcely be said to have been indeed the logical force
of the unanswerable credentials of the English Church.
On the contrary they were rather personal impressions,
feelings, and difficulties. His faithful, loving
nature made him cling desperately to early hopes,
friendships, and affections. Even to the end Thomas
Scott never loses his hold upon him. His narrative
is not the history of the normal progress of a mind
from England to Rome; it is so thoroughly exceptional
that it does not seem calculated to seduce to Rome
men governed in such high matters by argument and
reason rather than by impulse and feeling. We
do not therefore think that the mere fact of this
secession tells with any force against that communion
whose claims satisfied to their dying day such men
as Hooker and Andrewes, and Ussher and Hammond, and
Bramhall and Butler.

But, beyond this, his present view of the English
Church appears to be incompatible with that fierce
and internecine hostility to the claim upon the loyalty
of her children which is really essential to clear
the act of perverting others from her ranks from the
plainest guilt of schism. It is not merely that
the nobleness and tenderness of his nature make his
tone so unlike that of many of those who have taken
the same step with himself. It is not that every
provocation—­and how many they have been!—­every
misunderstanding—­and they have been all
but universal; every unworthy charge or insinuation—­down
to those of Professor Kingsley, failed to embitter
his feelings against the communion he has deserted
and the friends whom he has left. It is not this
to which we refer, for this is personal to himself,
and the fruit of his own generosity and true greatness
of soul. But we refer to his calm, deliberate
estimate of the forsaken Church. He says, indeed,
that since his change he has “had no changes
to record, no anxiety of heart whatever. I have
been in perfect peace and contentment. I never
had one doubt” (p. 373). But, as we have
seen already, this was always the temporary condition
in which every new phase of opinion landed him.
He was always able to build up these tabernacles of
rest. The difference between this and those former
resting-places is clear. In those he was still
a searcher after truth: he needed and required
conviction, and a new conviction might shake the old
comfort. But his present resting-place is built
upon the denial of all further enquiry. “I
have,” he says (p. 374), “no further history
of religious opinions to narrate”: and
some following words show how entirely it is this abandonment
of the idea of the actual conviction of truth for
the blind admission of the dictates of a despotic
external authority on which he rests.

Page 234

* * * *
*

There is another deeply interesting question raised
by Dr. Newman’s work, on which, if our limits
did not absolutely prevent, we should be glad to enter.
We mean the present position of the Church of Rome
with that great rationalistic movement with which
we, too, are called to contend. Everywhere in
Europe this contest is proceeding, and the relations
of the Church of Rome towards it are becoming daily
more and more embarrassed. Mr. Ffoulkes tells
us that “the ’Home and Foreign Review’
is the only publication professing to emanate
from Roman Catholics in this country that can be named
in the same breath with the leading Protestant Reviews."[1]
Since he wrote these words its course has been closed
by Pontifical authority. M. Montalembert has barely
escaped censure with the payment of the penalty—­so
heavy to his co-religionists—­of an enforced
silence; and Dr. Newman “interprets recent acts
of authority as tying the hands of a controversialist
such as I should be,"[2] and so is prevented completing
the great work which has occupied so much of his thoughts,
and which promised, more than any other work this
country is likely to see, to set some limiting boundary
line between the provinces of a humble faith in Revelation
and an ardent love of advancing science. This
is an evil inflicted by Rome on this whole generation.
But in truth, whenever the mind of Christendom is
active, the attitude of the Papal communion before
this new enemy is that of a startled, trembling minaciousness,
which invites the deadly combat it can so ill maintain.

[1] “Union Review,” ix, 294. [2] “Apol.”
405.

These facts are patent to every one who knows anything
whatever of the present state of religious thought
throughout Roman Catholic Europe. Almost every
one knows further that the struggle between those who
would subject all science and all the actings of the
human mind to the authority of the Church, and those
who would limit the exercise of that authority more
or less to the proper subject-matter of theology, is
rife and increasing. The words of, perhaps, the
ablest living member of the Roman Catholic communion
have rung through Europe, and many a heart in all
religious communions has been saddened by the thought
of Dr. Doellinger’s virtual censure. And
yet it is at such a time as this that Dr. Manning
ventures to put forth his “Letters to a Friend,”
painting all as peace, unanimity, and obedient faith
within the Roman Church; all dissension, unbelief,
and letting slip of the ancient faith within our own
communion. Surely such are not the weapons by
which the cause of God’s truth can be advanced!

But we must bring our remarks on the “Apologia”
to a close.

Page 235

Some lessons there are, and those great ones, which
this book is calculated to instil into members of
our own communion. Pre-eminently it shows the
rottenness of that mere Act-of-Parliament foundation
on which some, now-a-days, would rest our Church.
Dr. Newman suggests, more than once, that such a course
must rob us of all our present strength. Dr.
Manning sings his paean with wild and premature delight,
as if the evil was already accomplished. In his
first letter he triumphed in the silence of Convocation,
but that silence has since been broken. A solemn
synodical judgment, couched in the most explicit language,
has condemned the false teaching which had been our
Church’s scandal. But because a “very
exalted person in the House of Lords"[1] (p. 4), with
an ignorance or an ignoring of law, as was shown in
the debate, which was simply astonishing, chose, in
a manner which even Dr. Manning condemns, to assert,
without a particle of real evidence, that the Convocation
had exceeded its legitimate powers, Dr. Manning is
in ecstasies. The “very exalted person”
becomes “a righteous judge, a learned judge,
a Daniel come to judgment—­yea, a Daniel.”
These shouts of joy ought to be enough to show men
where the real danger lies. Our present position
is impregnable. But if we abandon it for the
new one proposed to us by the Rationalist party, how
shall we be able to stand? How could a national
religious Establishment which should seek to rest its
foundations—­not on God’s Word; on
the ancient Creeds; on a true Apostolic ministry; on
valid Sacraments; on a living, even though it be an
obscured, unity with the Universal Church, and so
on the presence with her of her Lord, and on the gifts
of His Spirit—­but upon the critical reason
of individuals, and the support of Acts of Parliament—­ever
stand in the coming struggle? How could it meet
Rationalism on the one hand? How could it withstand
Popery on the other? After such a fatal change
its career might be easily foreshadowed. Under
the assaults of Rationalism, it would year by year
lose some parts of the great deposit of the Catholic
faith. Under the attacks of Rome, it would lose
many of those whom it can ill spare, because they
believe most firmly in the verities for which she
is ready to witness. Thus it might continue until
our ministry were filled with the time-serving, the
ignorant, and the unbelieving; and, when this has
come to pass, the day of final doom cannot be far
distant. How such evils are to be averted is the
anxious question of the present day. The great
practical question seems to us to be that to which
we have before this alluded,[2]—­How the
Supreme Court of Appeal can be made fitter for the
due discharge of its momentous functions? We
cannot enter here upon that great question. But
solved it must be, and solved upon the principles
of the great Reformation statutes of our land, which
maintain, in the supremacy of the Crown, our undoubted
nationality; which, besides maintaining this great
principle of national life, save us from all the terrible
practical evils of appeals to Rome, and yet which
maintain the spirituality of the land, as the guardians
under God of the great deposit of the Faith, in the
very terms in which the Catholic Church of Christ
has from the beginning received, and to this day handed
down in its completeness, the inestimable gift.

Page 236

ANONYMOUS ON “WAVERLEY”

[From The Quarterly Review, July, 1814]

Waverley; or, ’tis Sixty Years since.
3 vols. 12mo. Edinburgh, 1814.

We have had so many occasions to invite our readers’
attention to that species of composition called Novels,
and have so often stated our general views of the
principles of this very agreeable branch of literature,
that we shall venture on the consideration of our present
subject with but a few observations, and those applicable
to a class of novels, of which it is a favourable
specimen.

The earlier novelists wrote at periods when society
was not perfectly formed, and we find that their picture
of life was an embodying of their own conceptions
of the “beau ideal.”—­Heroes
all generosity and ladies all chastity, exalted above
the vulgarities of society and nature, maintain, through
eternal folios, their visionary virtues, without the
stain of any moral frailty, or the degradation of any
human necessities. But this high-flown style
went out of fashion as the great mass of mankind became
more informed of each other’s feelings and concerns,
and as a nearer intercourse taught them that the real
course of human life is a conflict of duty and desire,
of virtue and passion, of right and wrong; in the
description of which it is difficult to say whether
uniform virtue or unredeemed vice would be in the greater
degree tedious and absurd.

The novelists next endeavoured to exhibit a general
view of society. The characters in Gil Blas and
Tom Jones are not individuals so much as specimens
of the human race; and these delightful works have
been, are, and ever will be popular, because they
present lively and accurate delineations of the workings
of the human soul, and that every man who reads them
is obliged to confess to himself, that in similar
circumstances with the personages of Le Sage and Fielding,
he would probably have acted in the way in which they
are described to have done.

From this species the transition to a third was natural.
The first class was theory—­it was improved
into a generic description, and that again
led the way to a more particular classification—­a
copying not of man in general, but of men of a peculiar
nation, profession, or temper, or, to go a step further—­of
individuals.

Thus Alcander and Cyrus could never have existed in
human society—­they are neither French,
nor English, nor Italian, because it is only allegorically
that they are men. Tom Jones might have
been a Frenchman, and Gil Blas an Englishman, because
the essence of their characters is human nature, and
the personal situation of the individual is almost
indifferent to the success of the object which the
author proposed to himself: while, on the other
hand, the characters of the most popular novels of

Page 237

later times are Irish, or Scotch, or French, and not
in the abstract, men.—­The general
operations of nature are circumscribed to her effects
on an individual character, and the modern novels
of this class, compared with the broad and noble style
of the earlier writers, may be considered as Dutch
pictures, delightful in their vivid and minute details
of common life, wonderfully entertaining to the close
observer of peculiarities, and highly creditable to
the accuracy, observation and humour of the painter,
but exciting none of those more exalted feelings,
giving none of those higher views of the human soul
which delight and exalt the mind of the spectator of
Raphael, Correggio, or Murillo.

But as in a gallery we are glad to see every style
of excellence, and are ready to amuse ourselves with
Teniers and Gerard Dow, so we derive great pleasure
from the congenial delineations of Castle Rack-rent
and Waverley; and we are well assured that any reader
who is qualified to judge of the illustration we have
borrowed from a sister art, will not accuse us of
undervaluing, by this comparison, either Miss Edgeworth
or the ingenious author of the work now under consideration.
We mean only to say, that the line of writing which
they have adopted is less comprehensive and less sublime,
but not that it is less entertaining or less useful
than that of their predecessors. On the contrary,
so far as utility constitutes merit in a novel, we
have no hesitation in preferring the moderns to their
predecessors. We do not believe that any man
or woman was ever improved in morals or manners by
the reading of Tom Jones or Peregrine Pickle, though
we are confident that many have profited by the Tales
of Fashionable Life, and the Cottagers of Glenburnie.

We have heard Waverley called a Scotch Castle Rack-rent;
and we have ourselves alluded to a certain resemblance
between these works; but we must beg leave to explain
that the resemblance consists only in this, that the
one is a description of the peculiarities of Scottish
manners as the other is of those of Ireland; and that
we are far from placing on the same level the merits
and qualities of the works. Waverley is of a
much higher strain, and may be safely placed far above
the amusing vulgarity of Castle Rack-rent, and by
the side of Ennui or the Absentee, the best undoubtedly
of Miss Edgeworth’s compositions.

* * * *
*

We shall conclude this article, which has grown to
an immoderate length, by observing what, indeed, our
readers must have already discovered, that Waverley,
who gives his name to the story, is far from being
its hero, and that in truth the interest and merit
of the work is derived, not from any of the ordinary
qualities of a novel, but from the truth of its facts,
and the accuracy of its delineations.

Page 238

We confess that we have, speaking generally, a great
objection to what may be called historical romance,
in which real and fictitious personages, and actual
and fabulous events are mixed together to the utter
confusion of the reader, and the unsettling of all
accurate recollections of past transactions; and we
cannot but wish that the ingenious and intelligent
author of Waverley had rather employed himself in
recording historically the character and transactions
of his countrymen Sixty Years since, than in
writing a work, which, though it may be, in its facts,
almost true, and in its delineations perfectly accurate,
will yet, in sixty years hence, be regarded,
or rather, probably, disregarded, as a mere
romance, and the gratuitous invention of a facetious
fancy.

ON SCOTT’S “TALES OF MY LANDLORD”

These Tales belong obviously to a class of novels
which we have already had occasion repeatedly to notice,
and which have attracted the attention of the public
in no common degree,—­we mean Waverley, Guy
Mannering, and the Antiquary, and we have little hesitation
to pronounce them either entirely, or in a great measure,
the work of the same author. Why he should industriously
endeavour to elude observation by taking leave of
us in one character, and then suddenly popping out
upon us in another, we cannot pretend to guess without
knowing more of his personal reasons for preserving
so strict an incognito that has hitherto reached us.
We can, however, conceive many reasons for a writer
observing this sort of mystery; not to mention that
it has certainly had its effect in keeping up the
interest which his works have excited.

We do not know if the imagination of our author will
sink in the opinion of the public when deprived of
that degree of invention which we have been hitherto
disposed to ascribe to him; but we are certain that
it ought to increase the value of his portraits, that
human beings have actually sate for them. These
coincidences between fiction and reality are perhaps
the very circumstances to which the success of these
novels is in a great measure to be attributed:
for, without depreciating the merit of the artist,
every spectator at once recognizes in those scenes
and faces which are copied from nature an air of distinct
reality, which is not attached to fancy-pieces however
happily conceived and elaborately executed. By
what sort of freemasonry, if we may use the term,
the mind arrives at this conviction, we do not pretend
to guess, but every one must have felt that he instinctively
and almost insensibly recognizes in painting, poetry,
or other works of imagination, that which is copied
from existing nature, and that he forthwith clings
to it with that kindred interest which thinks nothing
which is human indifferent to humanity. Before
therefore we proceed to analyse the work immediately
before us, we beg leave briefly to notice a few circumstances
connected with its predecessors.

Page 239

Our author has told us it was his object to present
a succession of scenes and characters connected with
Scotland in its past and present state, and we must
own that his stories are so slightly constructed as
to remind us of the showman’s thread with which
he draws up his pictures and presents them successively
to the eye of the spectator. He seems seriously
to have proceeded on Mr. Bays’s maxim—­“What
the deuce is a plot good for, but to bring in fine
things?”—­Probability and perspicuity
of narrative are sacrificed with the utmost indifference
to the desire of producing effect; and provided the
author can but contrive to “surprize and elevate,”
he appears to think that he has done his duty to the
public. Against this slovenly indifference we
have already remonstrated, and we again enter our
protest. It is in justice to the author himself
that we do so, because, whatever merit individual scenes
and passages may possess, (and none have been more
ready than ourselves to offer our applause), it is
clear that their effect would be greatly enhanced
by being disposed in a clear and continued narrative.
We are the more earnest in this matter, because it
seems that the author errs chiefly from carelessness.
There may be something of system in it, however:
for we have remarked, that with an attention which
amounts even to affectation, he has avoided the common
language of narrative, and thrown his story, as much
as possible, into a dramatic shape. In many cases
this has added greatly to the effect, by keeping both
the actors and action continually before the reader,
and placing him, in some measure, in the situation
of the audience at a theatre, who are compelled to
gather the meaning of the scene from what the dramatis
personae say to each other, and not from any explanation
addressed immediately to themselves. But though
the author gain this advantage, and thereby compel
the reader to think of the personages of the novel
and not of the writer, yet the practice, especially
pushed to the extent we have noticed, is a principal
cause of the flimsiness and incoherent texture of
which his greatest admirers are compelled to complain.
Few can wish his success more sincerely than we do,
and yet without more attention on his own part, we
have great doubts of its continuance.

In addition to the loose and incoherent style of the
narration, another leading fault in these novels is
the total want of interest which the reader attaches
to the character of the hero. Waverley, Brown,
or Bertram in Guy Mannering, and Lovel in the Antiquary,
are all brethren of a family; very amiable and very
insipid sort of young men. We think we can perceive
that this error is also in some degree occasioned by
the dramatic principle upon which the author frames
his plots. His chief characters are never actors,
but always acted upon by the spur of circumstances,
and have their fates uniformly determined by the agency
of the subordinate persons. This arises from the

Page 240

author having usually represented them as foreigners
to whom every thing in Scotland is strange,—­a
circumstance which serves as his apology for entering
into many minute details which are reflectively, as
it were, addressed to the reader through the medium
of the hero. While he is going into explanations
and details which, addressed directly to the reader,
might appear tiresome and unnecessary, he gives interest
to them by exhibiting the effect which they produce
upon the principal person of his drama, and at the
same time obtains a patient hearing for what might
otherwise be passed over without attention. But
if he gains this advantage, it is by sacrificing the
character of the hero. No one can be interesting
to the reader who is not himself a prime agent in
the scene. This is understood even by the worthy
citizen and his wife, who are introduced as prolocutors
in Fletcher’s Knight of the Burning Pestle.
When they are asked what the principal person of the
drama shall do?—­the answer is prompt and
ready—­“Marry, let him come forth and
kill a giant.” There is a good deal of
tact in the request. Every hero in poetry, in
fictitious narrative, ought to come forth and do or
say something or other which no other person could
have done or said; make some sacrifice, surmount some
difficulty, and become interesting to us otherwise
than by his mere appearance on the scene, the passive
tool of the other characters.

The insipidity of this author’s heroes may be
also in part referred to the readiness with which
the twists and turns his story to produce some immediate
and perhaps temporary effect. This could hardly
be done without representing the principal character
either as inconsistent or flexible in his principles.
The ease with which Waverley adopts and after forsakes
the Jacobite party in 1745 is a good example of what
we mean. Had he been painted as a steady character,
his conduct would have been improbable. The author
was aware of this; and yet, unwilling to relinquish
an opportunity of introducing the interior of the Chevalier’s
military court, the circumstances of the battle of
Preston-pans, and so forth, he hesitates not to sacrifice
poor Waverley, and to represent him as a reed blown
about at the pleasure of every breeze: a less
careless writer would probably have taken some pains
to gain the end proposed in a more artful and ingenious
manner. But our author was hasty, and has paid
the penalty of his haste.

We have hinted that we are disposed to question the
originality of these novels in point of invention,
and that in doing so, we do not consider ourselves
as derogating from the merit of the author, to whom,
on the contrary, we give the praise due to one who
has collected and brought out with accuracy and effect,
incidents and manners which might otherwise have slept
in oblivion. We proceed to our proofs.[1]

Page 241

[1] It will be readily conceived that the curious
MSS. and other
information of which we have
availed ourselves were not accessible
to us in this country; but
we have been assiduous in our inquiries;
and are happy enough to possess
a correspondent whose researches on
the spot have been indefatigable,
and whose kind, and ready
communications have anticipated
all our wishes.

* * * *
*

The traditions and manners of the Scotch were so blended
with superstitious practices and fears, that the author
of these novels seems to have deemed it incumbent
on him, to transfer many more such incidents to his
novels, than seem either probable or natural to an
English reader. It may be some apology that his
story would have lost the national cast, which it
was chiefly his object to preserve, had this been
otherwise. There are few families of antiquity
in Scotland, which do not possess some strange legends,
told only under promise of secrecy, and with an air
of mystery; in developing which, the influence of the
powers of darkness is referred to. The truth probably
is, that the agency of witches and demons was often
made to account for the sudden disappearance of individuals
and similar incidents, too apt to arise out of the
evil dispositions of humanity, in a land where revenge
was long held honourable—­where private
feuds and civil broils disturbed the inhabitants for
ages—­and where justice was but weakly and
irregularly executed. Mr. Law, a conscientious
but credulous clergyman of the Kirk of Scotland, who
lived in the seventeenth century, has left behind him
a very curious manuscript, in which, with the political
events of that distracted period, he has intermingled
the various portents and marvellous occurrences which,
in common with his age, he ascribed to supernatural
agency. The following extract will serve to illustrate
the taste of this period for the supernatural.
When we read such things recorded by men of sense
and education, (and Mr. Law was deficient in neither),
we cannot help remembering the times of paganism, when
every scene, incident, and action, had its appropriate
and presiding deity. It is indeed curious to
consider what must have been the sensations of a person,
who lived under this peculiar species of hallucination,
believing himself beset on all hands by invisible agents;
one who was unable to account for the restiveness
of a nobleman’s carriage horses otherwise than
by the immediate effect of witchcraft: and supposed
that the sage femme of the highest reputation
was most likely to devote the infants to the infernal
spirits, upon their very entrance into life.

* * * *
*

Page 242

To the superstitions of the North Britons must be
added their peculiar and characteristic amusements;
and here we have some atonement to make to the memory
of the learned Paulus Pleydell, whose compotatory
relaxations, better information now inclines us to
think, we mentioned with somewhat too little reverence.
Before the new town of Edinburgh (as it is called)
was built, its inhabitants lodged, as is the practice
of Paris at this day, in large buildings called lands,
each family occupying a story, and having access to
it by a stair common to all the inhabitants.
These buildings, when they did not front the high street
of the city, composed the sides of little, narrow,
unwholesome closes or lanes. The miserable
and confined accommodation which such habitations
afforded, drove men of business, as they were
called, that is, people belonging to the law, to hold
their professional rendezvouses in taverns, and many
lawyers of eminence spent the principal part of their
time in some tavern of note, transacted their business
there, received the visits of clients with their writers
or attornies, and suffered no imputation from so doing.
This practice naturally led to habits of conviviality,
to which the Scottish lawyers, till of very late years,
were rather too much addicted. Few men drank so
hard as the counsellors of the old school, and there
survived till of late some veterans who supported
in that respect the character of their predecessors.
To vary the humour of a joyous evening many frolics
were resorted to, and the game of high jinks
was one of the most common.[1] In fact, high jinks
was one of the petits jeux with which certain
circles were wont to while away the time; and though
it claims no alliance with modern associations, yet,
as it required some shrewdness and dexterity to support
the characters assumed for the occasion, it is not
difficult to conceive that it might have been as interesting
and amusing to the parties engaged in it, as counting
the spots of a pack of cards, or treasuring in memory
the rotation in which they are thrown on the table.
The worst of the game was what that age considered
as its principal excellence, namely, that the forfeitures
being all commuted for wine, it proved an encouragement
to hard drinking, the prevailing vice of the age.

[1] We have learned, with some dismay, that one of
the ablest lawyers
Scotland ever produced, and
who lives to witness (although in
retirement) the various changes
which have taken place in her courts
of judicature, a man who has
filled with marked distinction the
highest offices of his profession,
tush’d (pshaw’d) extremely at
the delicacy of our former
criticism. And certainly he claims some
title to do so, having been
in his youth not only a witness of such
orgies as are described as
proceeding under the auspices of Mr.
Pleydell, but himself a distinguished
performer.

Page 243

On the subject of Davie Gellatley, the fool of the
Baron of Bradwardine’s family, we are assured
there is ample testimony that a custom, referred to
Shakespeare’s time in England, had, and in remote
provinces of Scotland, has still its counterpart, to
this day. We do not mean to say that the professed
jester with his bauble and his party-coloured vestment
can be found in any family north of the Tweed.
Yet such a personage held this respectable office
in the family of the Earls of Strathemore within the
last century, and his costly holiday dress, garnished
with bells of silver, is still preserved in the Castle
of Glamis. But we are assured, that to a much
later period, and even to this moment, the habits
and manners of Scotland have had some tendency to
preserve the existence of this singular order of domestics.
There are (comparatively speaking) no poor’s
rates in the country parishes of Scotland, and of
course no work-houses to immure either their worn out
poor or the “moping idiot and the madman gay,”
whom Crabbe characterizes as the happiest inhabitants
of these mansions, because insensible of their misfortunes.
It therefore happens almost necessarily in Scotland,
that the house of the nearest proprietor of wealth
and consequence proves a place of refuge for these
outcasts of society; and until the pressure of the
times, and the calculating habits which they have
necessarily generated had rendered the maintenance
of a human being about such a family an object of
some consideration, they usually found an asylum there,
and enjoyed the degree of comfort of which their limited
intellect rendered them susceptible. Such idiots
were usually employed in some simple sort of occasional
labour; and if we are not misinformed, the situation
of turn-spit was often assigned them, before the modern
improvement of the smoke-jack. But, however employed,
they usually displayed towards their benefactors a
sort of instinctive attachment which was very affecting.
We knew one instance in which such a being refused
food for many days, pined away, literally broke his
heart, and died within the space of a very few weeks
after his benefactor’s decease. We cannot
now pause to deduce the moral inference which might
be derived from such instances. It is however
evident, that if there was a coarseness of mind in
deriving amusement from the follies of these unfortunate
beings, a circumstance to the disgrace of which they
were totally insensible, their mode of life was, in
other respects, calculated to promote such a degree
of happiness as their faculties permitted them to
enjoy. But besides the amusement which our forefathers
received from witnessing their imperfections and extravagancies,
there was a more legitimate source of pleasure in
the wild wit which they often flung around them with
the freedom of Shakespeare’s licensed clowns.
There are few houses in Scotland of any note or antiquity
where the witty sayings of some such character are
not occasionally quoted at this very day. The

Page 244

pleasure afforded to our forefathers by such repartees
was no doubt heightened by their wanting the habits
of more elegant amusement. But in Scotland the
practice long continued, and in the house of one of
the very first noblemen of that country (a man whose
name is never mentioned without reverence) and that
within the last twenty years, a jester such as we
have mentioned stood at the side-table during dinner,
and occasionally amused the guests by his extemporaneous
sallies. Imbecility of this kind was even considered
as an apology for intrusion upon the most solemn occasions.
All know the peculiar reverence with which the Scottish
of every rank attend on funeral ceremonies. Yet
within the memory of most of the present generation,
an idiot of an appearance equally hideous and absurd,
dressed, as if in mockery, in a rusty and ragged black
coat, decorated with a cravat and weepers made of
white paper in the form of those worn by the deepest
mourners, preceded almost every funeral procession
in Edinburgh, as if to turn into ridicule the last
rites paid to mortality.

It has been generally supposed that in the case of
these as of other successful novels, the most prominent
and peculiar characters were sketched from real life.
It was only after the death of Smollet, that two barbers
and a shoemaker contended about the character of Strap,
which each asserted was modelled from his own:
but even in the lifetime of the present author, there
is scarcely a dale in the pastoral districts of the
southern counties but arrogates to itself the possession
of the original Dandie Dinmont. As for Baillie
Mac Wheeble, a person of the highest eminence in the
law perfectly well remembers having received fees
from him.

* * * *
*

Although these strong resemblances occur so frequently,
and with such peculiar force, as almost to impress
us with the conviction that the author sketched from
nature, and not from fancy alone; yet we hesitate
to draw any positive conclusion, sensible that a character
dashed off as the representative of a certain class
of men will bear, if executed with fidelity to the
general outlines, not only that resemblance which he
ought to possess as “knight of the shire,”
but also a special affinity to some particular individual.
It is scarcely possible it should be otherwise.
When Emery appears on the stage as a Yorkshire peasant,
with the habit, manner, and dialect peculiar to the
character, and which he assumes with so much truth
and fidelity, those unacquainted with the province
or its inhabitants see merely the abstract idea, the
beau ideal of a Yorkshireman. But to those who
are intimate with both, the action and manner of the
comedian almost necessarily recall the idea of some
individual native (altogether unknown probably to the
performer) to whom his exterior and manners bear a
casual resemblance. We are therefore on the whole
inclined to believe, that the incidents are frequently
copied from actual occurrences, but that the
characters are either entirely fictitious, or if any
traits have been borrowed from real life, as in the
anecdote which we have quoted respecting Invernahyle,
they have been carefully disguised and blended with
such as are purely imaginary. We now proceed
to a more particular examination of the volumes before
us.

Page 245

They are entitled “Tales of my Landlord”:
why so entitled, excepting to introduce a quotation
from Don Quixote, it is difficult to conceive:
for Tales of my Landlord they are not, nor
is it indeed easy to say whose tales they ought to
be called. There is a proem, as it is termed,
supposed to be written by Jedediah Cleishbotham, the
schoolmaster and parish clerk of the village of Gandercleugh,
in which we are given to understand that these Tales
were compiled by his deceased usher, Mr. Peter Pattieson,
from the narratives or conversations of such travellers
as frequented the Wallace Inn, in that village.
Of this proem we shall only say that it is written
in the quaint style of that prefixed by Gay to his
Pastorals, being, as Johnson terms it, “such
imitation as he could obtain of obsolete language,
and by consequence in a style that was never written
nor spoken in any age or place.”

* * * *
*

We have given these details partly in compliance with
the established rules which our office prescribes,
and partly in the hope that the authorities we have
been enabled to bring together might give additional
light and interest to the story. From the unprecedented
popularity of the work, we cannot flatter ourselves
that our summary has made any one of our readers acquainted
with events with which he was not previously familiar.
The causes of that popularity we may be permitted shortly
to allude to; we cannot even hope to exhaust them,
and it is the less necessary that we should attempt
it, since we cannot suggest a consideration which
a perusal of the work has not anticipated in the minds
of all our readers.

One great source of the universal admiration which
this family of Novels has attracted, is their peculiar
plan, and the distinguished excellence with which
it has been executed. The objections that have
frequently been stated against what are called Historical
Romances, have been suggested, we think, rather from
observing the universal failure of that species of
composition, than from any inherent and constitutional
defect in the species of composition itself.
If the manners of different ages are injudiciously
blended together,—­if unpowdered crops and
slim and fairy shapes are commingled in the dance
with volumed wigs and far-extending hoops,—­if
in the portraiture of real character the truth of
history be violated, the eyes of the spectator are
necessarily averted from a picture which excites in
every well regulated and intelligent mind the hatred
of incredulity. We have neither time nor inclination
to enforce our remark by giving illustrations of it.
But if those unpardonable sins against good taste
can be avoided, and the features of an age gone by
can be recalled in a spirit of delineation at once
faithful and striking, the very opposite is the legitimate
conclusion: the composition itself is in every
point of view dignified and improved; and the author,
leaving the light and frivolous associates with whom

Page 246

a careless observer would be disposed to ally him,
takes his seat on the bench of the historians of his
time and country. In this proud assembly, and
in no mean place of it, we are disposed to rank the
author of these works; for we again express our conviction—­and
we desire to be understood to use the term as distinguished
from knowledge—­that they are all
the offspring of the same parent. At once a master
of the great events and minuter incidents of history,
and of the manners of the times he celebrates, as
distinguished from those which now prevail,—­the
intimate thus of the living and of the dead, his judgment
enables him to separate those traits which are characteristic
from those that are generic; and his imagination,
not less accurate and discriminating than vigorous
and vivid, presents to the mind of the reader the manners
of the times, and introduces to his familiar acquaintance
the individuals of his drama as they thought and spoke
and acted. We are not quite sure that any thing
is to be found in the manner and character of the Black
Dwarf which would enable us, without the aid of the
author’s information, and the facts he relates,
to give it to the beginning of the last century; and,
as we have already remarked, his free-booting robber
lives, perhaps, too late in time. But his delineation
is perfect. With palpable and inexcusable defects
in the denouement, there are scenes of deep
and overwhelming interest; and every one, we think,
must be delighted with the portrait of the Grandmother
of Hobbie Elliott, a representation soothing and consoling
in itself, and heightened in its effect by the contrast
produced from the lighter manners of the younger members
of the family, and the honest but somewhat blunt and
boisterous bearing of the shepherd himself.

The second tale, however, as we have remarked, is
more adapted to the talents of the author, and his
success has been proportionably triumphant. We
have trespassed too unmercifully on the time of our
gentle readers to indulge our inclination in endeavouring
to form an estimate of that melancholy but, nevertheless,
most attractive period in our history, when by the
united efforts of a corrupt and unprincipled government,
of extravagant fanaticism, want of education, perversion
of religion, and the influence of ill-instructed teachers,
whose hearts and understandings were estranged and
debased by the illapses of the wildest enthusiasm,
the liberty of the people was all but extinguished,
and the bonds of society nearly dissolved. Revolting
as all this is to the Patriot, it affords fertile
materials to the Poet. As to the beauty
of the delineation presented to the reader in this
tale, there is, we believe, but one opinion:
and we are persuaded that the more carefully and dispassionately
it is contemplated, the more perfect will it appear
in the still more valuable qualities of fidelity and
truth. We have given part of the evidence on
which we say this, and we will again recur to the

Page 247

subject. The opinions and language of the honest
party are detailed with the accuracy of a witness;
and he who could open to our view the state of the
Scottish peasantry, perishing in the field or on the
scaffold, and driven to utter and just desperation,
in attempting to defend their first and most sacred
rights; who could place before our eyes the leaders
of these enormities, from the notorious Duke of Lauderdale
downwards to the fellow mind that executed his behest,
precisely as they lived and looked,—­such
a chronicler cannot justly be charged with attempting
to extenuate or throw into the shade the corruptions
of a government that soon afterwards fell a victim
to its own follies and crimes.

Independently of the delineation of the manners and
characters of the times to which the story refers,
it is impossible to avoid noticing, as a separate
excellence, the faithful representation of general
nature. Looking not merely to the litter of novels
that peep out for a single day from the mud where
they were spawned, but to many of more ambitious pretensions—­it
is quite evident that in framing them, the authors
have first addressed themselves to the involutions
and developement of the story, as the principal object
of their attention; and that in entangling and unravelling
the plot, in combining the incidents which compose
it, and even in depicting the characters, they sought
for assistance chiefly in the writings of their predecessors.
Baldness, and uniformity, and inanity are the inevitable
results of this slovenly and unintellectual proceeding.
The volume which this author has studied is the great
book of Nature. He has gone abroad into the world
in quest of what the world will certainly and abundantly
supply, but what a man of great discrimination alone
will find, and a man of the very highest genius will
alone depict after he has discovered it. The characters
of Shakespeare are not more exclusively human, not
more perfectly men and women as they live and move,
than those of this mysterious author. It is from
this circumstance that, as we have already observed,
many of his personages are supposed to be sketched
from real life. He must have mixed much and variously
in the society of his native country; his studies
must have familiarized him to systems of manners now
forgotten; and thus the persons of his drama, though
in truth the creatures of his own imagination, convey
the impression of individuals who we are persuaded
must exist, or are evoked from their graves in all
their original freshness, entire in their lineaments,
and perfect in all the minute peculiarities of dress
and demeanour.

* * * *
*

Admitting, however, that these portraits are sketched
with spirit and effect, two questions arise of much
more importance than any thing affecting the merits
of the novels—­namely, whether it is safe
or prudent to imitate, in a fictitious narrative,
and often with a view to a ludicrous effect, the scriptural
style of the zealots of the seventeenth century; and
secondly, whether the recusant presbyterians, collectively
considered, do not carry too reverential and sacred
a character to be treated by an unknown author with
such insolent familiarity.

Page 248

On the first subject, we frankly own we have great
hesitation. It is scarcely possible to ascribe
scriptural expressions to hypocritical or extravagant
characters without some risk of mischief, because it
will be apt to create an habitual association between
the expression and the ludicrous manner in which it
is used, unfavourable to the reverence due to the
sacred text. And it is no defence to state that
this is an error inherent in the plan of the novel.
Bourdaloue, a great authority, extends this restriction
still farther, and denounces all attempts to unmask
hypocrisy by raillery, because in doing so the satirist
is necessarily compelled to expose to ridicule the
religious vizard of which he has divested him.
Yet even against such authority it may be stated,
that ridicule is the friend both of religion and virtue,
when directed against those who assume their garb,
whether from hypocrisy or fanaticism. The satire
of Butler, not always decorous in these particulars,
was yet eminently useful in stripping off their borrowed
gravity and exposing to public ridicule the affected
fanaticism of the times in which he lived. It
may also be remembered, that in the days of Queen
Anne a number of the Camisars or Huguenots of Dauphine
arrived as refugees in England, and became distinguished
by the name of the French prophets. The fate
of these enthusiasts in their own country had been
somewhat similar to that of the Covenanters. Like
them, they used to assemble in the mountains and desolate
places, to the amount of many hundreds, in arms, and
like them they were hunted and persecuted by the military.
Like them, they were enthusiasts, though their enthusiasm
assumed a character more decidedly absurd. The
fugitive Camisars who came to London had convulsion-fits,
prophesied, made converts, and attracted the public
attention by an offer to raise the dead. The
English minister, instead of fine and imprisonment
and other inflictions which might have placed them
in the rank and estimation of martyrs, and confirmed
in their faith their numerous disciples, encouraged
a dramatic author to bring out a farce on the subject
which, though neither very witty nor very delicate,
had the good effect of laughing the French prophets
out of their audience and putting a stop to an inundation
of nonsense which could not have failed to disgrace
the age in which it appeared. The Camisars subsided
into their ordinary vocation of psalmodic whiners,
and no more was heard of their sect or their miracles.
It would be well if all folly of the kind could be
so easily quelled: for enthusiastic nonsense,
whether of this day or of those which have passed
away, has no more title to shelter itself under the
veil of religion than a common pirate to be protected
by the reverence due to an honoured and friendly flag.

Page 249

Still, however, we must allow that there is great
delicacy and hesitation to be used in employing the
weapon of ridicule on any point connected with religion.
Some passages occur in the work before us for which
the writer’s sole apology must be the uncontroulable
disposition to indulge the peculiarity of his vein
of humour—­a temptation which even the saturnine
John Knox was unable to resist either in narrating
the martyrdom of his friend Wisheart or the assassination
of his enemy Beatson, and in the impossibility of
resisting which his learned and accurate biographer
has rested his apology for this mixture of jest and
earnest.

“There are writers,” he says
(rebutting the charge of Hume against Knox), “who
can treat the most sacred subjects with a levity bordering
on profanity. Must we at once pronounce them
profane, and is nothing to be set down to the score
of natural temper inclining them to wit and humour?
The pleasantry which Knox has mingled with his narrative
of his (Cardinal Beatson’s) death and burial
is unseasonable and unbecoming. But it is to
be imputed not to any pleasure which he took in
describing a bloody scene, but to the strong propensity
which he had to indulge his vein of humour.
Those who have read his history with attention must
have perceived that he is not able to check this even
on the very serious occasions.”—­Macrie’s
Life of Knox, p. 147.

Indeed Dr. Macrie himself has given us a striking
instance of the indulgence which the Presbyterian
clergy, even of the strictest persuasion, permit to
the vis comica. After describing a polemical
work as “ingeniously constructed and occasionally
enlivened with strokes of humour,” he transfers,
to embellish his own pages, (for we can discover no
purpose of edification which the tale serves), a ludicrous
parody made by an ignorant parish-priest on certain
words of a Psalm, too sacred to be here quoted.
Our own innocent pleasantry cannot, in this instance,
be quite reconciled with that of the learned biographer
of John Knox, but we can easily conceive that his authority
may be regarded in Scotland as decisive of the extent
to which a humourist may venture in exercising his
wit upon scriptural expressions without incurring
censure even from her most rigid divines.

It may however be a very different point how far the
author is entitled to be acquitted upon the second
point of indictment. To use too much freedom
with things sacred is a course much more easily glossed
over than that of exposing to ridicule the persons
of any particular sect. Every one knows the reply
of the great Prince of Conde to Louis XIV when this
monarch expressed his surprize at the clamour excited
by Moliere’s Tartuffe, while a blasphemous farce
called Scaramouche Hermite was performed without
giving any scandal: “C’est parceque
Scaramouche ne jouoit que le ciel et la religion,
dont les devots se soucioient beaucoup moins que d’eux-memes.”

Page 250

We believe, therefore, the best service we can do
our author in the present case is to shew that the
odious part of his satire applies only to that fierce
and unreasonable set of extra-presbyterians, whose
zeal, equally absurd and cruel, afforded pretexts
for the severities inflicted on non-conformists without
exception, and gave the greatest scandal and offence
to the wise, sober, enlightened, and truly pious among
the Presbyterians.

The principal difference betwixt the Cameronians and
the rational presbyterians has been already touched
upon. It may be summed in a very few words.

After the restoration of Charles II episcopacy was
restored in Scotland, upon the unanimous petition
of the Scottish parliament. Had this been accompanied
with a free toleration of the presbyterians, whose
consciences preferred a different mode of church-government,
we do not conceive there would have been any wrong
done to that ancient kingdom. But instead of
this, the most violent means of enforcing conformity
were resorted to without scruple, and the ejected
presbyterian clergy were persecuted by penal statutes
and prohibited from the exercise of their ministry.
These rigours only made the people more anxiously seek
out and adhere to the silenced preachers. Driven
from the churches, they held conventicles in houses.
Expelled from cities and the mansions of men, they
met on the hills and deserts like the French Huguenots.
Assailed with arms, they repelled force by force.
The severity of the rulers, instigated by the episcopal
clergy, increased with the obstinacy of the recusants,
until the latter, in 1666, assumed arms for the purpose
of asserting their right to worship God in their own
way. They were defeated at Pentland; and in 1669
a gleam of common sense and justice seems to have
beamed upon the Scottish councils of Charles.
They granted what was called an indulgence
(afterwards repeatedly renewed) to the presbyterian
clergy, assigned them small stipends, and permitted
them to preach in such deserted churches as should
be assigned to them by the Scottish Privy Council.
This “indulgence,” though clogged with
harsh conditions and frequently renewed or capriciously
recalled, was still an acceptable boon to the wiser
and better part of the presbyterian clergy, who considered
it as an opening to the exercise of their ministry
under the lawful authority, which they continued to
acknowledge. But fiercer and more intractable
principles were evinced by the younger ministers of
that persuasion. They considered the submitting
to exercise their ministry under the controul of any
visible authority as absolute erastianism, a desertion
of the great invisible and divine Head of the church,
and a line of conduct which could only be defended,
says one of their tracts, by nullifidians, time-servers,
infidels, or the Archbishop of Canterbury. They
held up to ridicule and abhorrence such of their brethren
as considered mere toleration as a boon worth accepting.

Page 251

Every thing, according to these fervent divines, which
fell short of re-establishing presbytery as the sole
and predominating religion, all that did not imply
a full restoration of the Solemn League and Covenant,
was an imperfect and unsound composition between God
and mammon, episcopacy and prelacy. The following
extracts from a printed sermon by one of them, on
the subject of “soul-confirmation,” will
at once exemplify the contempt and scorn with which
these high-flyers regarded their more sober-minded
brethren, and serve as a specimen of the homely eloquence
with which they excited their followers. The reader
will probably be of opinion that it is worthy of Kettledrummle
himself, and will serve to clear Mr. Jedediah Cleishbotham
of the charge of exaggeration.

There is many folk that has a face to
the religion that is in fashion, and there is many
folk, they have ay a face to the old company, they
have a face for godly folk, and they have a face
for persecutors of godly folk, and they will be
daddies bairns and minnies bairns both; they will
be prelates bairns and they will be malignants
bairns and they will be the people of God’s
bairns. And what think ye of that bastard temper?
Poor Peter had a trial of this soupleness, but God
made Paul an instrument to take him by the neck and
shake it from him: And O that God would take
us by the neck and shake our soupleness from us.

Therefore you that keeps only your old
job-trot, and does not mend your pace, you will
not wone at soul-confirmation, there is a whine
(i.e., a few) old job-trot, and does not mend
your pace, you will not wone at soul-confirmation,
there is a whine old job-trot ministers among us,
a whine old job-trot professors, they have their own
pace, and faster they will not go; O therefore they
could never wine to soul-confirmation in
the mettere of God. And our old job-trot ministers
is turned curates, and our old job-trot professors
is joined with them, and now this way God has turned
them inside out, and has made it manifest and when
their heart is hanging upon this braw, I will not
give a gray groat for them and their profession
both.

The devil has the ministers and professors
of Scotland, now in a sive, and O as he sifts, and
O as he riddles, and O as he rattles, and O the chaff
he gets; And I fear there be more chaff nor there be
good corn, and that will be found among us or all
be done: but the soul-confirmed man
leaves ever the devil at two more, and he has ay the
matter gadged, and leaves ay the devil in the lee side,—­Sirs
O work in the day of the cross.

The more moderate presbyterian ministers saw with
pain and resentment the lower part of their congregation,
who had least to lose by taking desperate courses,
withdrawn from their flocks, by their more zealous
pretenders to purity of doctrine, while they themselves
were held up to ridicule, old jog trot professors

Page 252

and chaff-winnowed out and flung away by Satan.
They charged the Cameronian preachers with leading
the deluded multitude to slaughter at Bothwell, by
prophesying a certainty of victory, and dissuading
them from accepting the amnesty offered by Monmouth.
“All could not avail,” says Mr. Law, himself
a presbyterian minister, “with McCargill, Kidd,
Douglas, and other witless men amongst them, to hearken
to any proposals of peace. Among others that Douglas,
sitting on his horse, and preaching to the confused
multitude, told them that they would come to terms
with them, and like a drone was always droning on
these terms with them: ’they would give
us a half Christ, but we will have a whole Christ,’
and such like impertinent speeches as these, good
enough to feed those that are served with wind and
not with the sincere milk of the word of God.”
Law also censures these irritated and extravagant
enthusiasts, not only for intending to overthrow the
government, but as binding themselves to kill all that
would not accede to their opinion, and he gives several
instances of such cruelty being exercised by them,
not only upon straggling soldiers whom they shot by
the way or surprized in their quarters, but upon those
who, having once joined them, had fallen away from
their principles. Being asked why they committed
these cruelties in cold blood, they answered, ’they
were obliged to do it by their sacred bond.’
Upon these occasions they practised great cruelties,
mangling the bodies of their victims that each man
might have his share of the guilt. In these cases
the Cameronians imagined themselves the direct and
inspired executioners of the vengeance of heaven.
Nor did they lack the usual incentives of enthusiasm.
Peden and others among them set up a claim to the gift
of prophecy, though they seldom foretold any thing
to the purpose. They detected witches, had bodily
encounters with the enemy of mankind in his own shape,
or could discover him as, lurking in the disguise of
a raven, he inspired the rhetoric of a Quaker’s
meeting. In some cases, celestial guardians kept
guard over their field-meetings. At a conventicle
held on the Lomond-hills, the Rev. Mr. Blacader was
credibly assured, under the hands of four honest men,
that at the time the meeting was disturbed by the
soldiers, some women who had remained at home, “clearly
perceived as the form of a tall man, majestic-like,
stand in the air in stately posture with the one leg,
as it were, advanced before the other, standing above
the people all the time of the soldiers shooting.”
Unluckily this great vision of the Guarded Mount did
not conclude as might have been expected. The
divine sentinel left his post too soon, and the troopers
fell upon the rear of the audience, plundered and
stripped many, and made eighteen prisoners.

Page 253

But we have no delight to dwell either upon the atrocities
or absurdities of a people whose ignorance and fanaticism
were rendered frantic by persecution. It is enough
for our present purpose to observe that the present
Church of Scotland, which comprizes so much sound
doctrine and learning, and has produced so many distinguished
characters, is the legitimate representative of the
indulged clergy of the days of Charles II, settled
however upon a comprehensive basis. That after
the revolution, it should have succeeded episcopacy
as the national religion, was natural and regular,
because it possessed all the sense, learning, and
moderation fit for such a change, and because among
its followers were to be found the only men of property
and influence who acknowledged presbytery. But
the Cameronians continued long as a separate sect,
though their preachers were bigoted and ignorant, and
their hearers were gleaned out of the lower ranks of
the peasantry. Their principle, so far as it
was intelligible, asserted that paramount species
of presbyterian church-government which was established
in the year 1648, and they continued to regard the
established church as erastian and time-serving, because
they prudently remained silent upon certain abstract
and delicate topics, where there might be some collision
between the absolute liberty asserted by the church
and the civil government of the state. The Cameronians,
on the contrary, disowned all kings and government
whatsoever, which should not take the Solemn League
and Covenant; and long retained hopes of re-establishing
that great national engagement, a bait which was held
out to them by all those who wished to disturb the
government during the reign of William and Anne, as
is evident from the Memoirs of Ker of Kersland, and
the Negotiations of Colonel Hooke with the Jacobites
and disaffected of the year.

A party so wild in their principles, so vague and
inconsistent in their views, could not subsist long
under a free and unlimited toleration. They continued
to hold their preachings on the hills, but they lost
much of their zeal when they were no longer liable
to be disturbed by dragoons, sheriffs, and lieutenants
of Militia.—­The old fable of the Traveller’s
Cloak was in time verified, and the fierce sanguinary
zealots of the days of Claverhouse sunk into such quiet
and peaceable enthusiasts as Howie of Lochgoin, or
Old Mortality himself. It is, therefore, upon
a race of sectaries who have long ceased to exist,
that Mr. Jedediah Cleishbotham has charged all that
is odious, and almost all that is ridiculous, in his
fictitious narrative; and we can no more suppose any
moderate presbyterian involved in the satire, than
we should imagine that the character of Hampden stood
committed by a little raillery on the person of Ludovic
Claxton, the Muggletonian. If, however, there
remain any of those sectaries who, confining the beams
of the Gospel to the Goshen of their own obscure synagogue,
and with James Mitchell, the intended assassin, giving

Page 254

their sweeping testimony against prelacy and popery,
The Whole Duty of Man and bordles, promiscuous dancing
and the Common Prayer-book, and all the other enormities
and backslidings of the time, may perhaps be offended
at this idle tale, we are afraid they will receive
their answer in the tone of the revellers to Malvolio,
who, it will be remembered, was something a kind of
Puritan: “Doest thou think because thou
art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?—­Aye,
by Saint Anne, and ginger will be hot in the mouth
too.”

ON LEIGH HUNT

[From The Quarterly Review, January, 1816]

The Story of Rimini, a Poem. By LEIGH
HUNT. fc. 8vo. pp. 111. London, 1816.

A considerable part of this poem was written in Newgate,
where the author was some time confined, we believe
for a libel which appeared in a newspaper, of which
he is said to be the conductor. Such an introduction
is not calculated to make a very favourable impression.
Fortunately, however, we are as little prejudiced as
possible on this subject: we have never seen
Mr. Hunt’s newspaper; we have never heard any
particulars of his offence; nor should we have known
that he had been imprisoned but for his own confession.
We have not, indeed, ever read one line that he has
written, and are alike remote from the knowledge of
his errors or the influence of his private character.
We are to judge him solely from the work now before
us; and our criticism would be worse than uncandid
if it were swayed by any other consideration.

The poem is not destitute of merit; but—­and
this, we confess, was our main inducement to notice
it—­it is written on certain pretended principles,
and put forth as a pattern for imitation, with a degree
of arrogance which imposes on us the duty of making
some observations on this new theory, which Mr. Leigh
Hunt, with the weight and authority of his venerable
name, has issued, ex cathedra, as the canons of poetry
and criticism.

These canons Mr. Hunt endeavours to explain and establish
in a long preface, written in a style which, though
Mr. Hunt implies that it is meant to be perfectly
natural and unaffected, appears to us the most strange,
laboured, uncouth, and unintelligible species of prose
that we ever read, only indeed to be exceeded in these
qualities by some of the subsequent verses; and both
the prose and the verse are the first eruptions of
this disease with which Mr. Leigh Hunt insists upon
inoculating mankind.

Mr. Hunt’s first canon is that there
should be a great freedomof versification—­this
is a proposition to which we should have readily assented;
but when Mr. Hunt goes on to say that by freedom
of versification he means something which neither
Pope nor Johnson possessed, and of which even “they
knew less than any poets perhaps who ever wrote,”
we check our confidence; and, after a little consideration,
find that by freedom Mr. Hunt means only an inaccurate,
negligent, and harsh style of versification, which
our early poets fell into from want of polish, and
such poets as Mr. Hunt still practise from want of
ease, of expression, and of taste.

Page 255

“License he means, when he
cries liberty.”

Mr. Hunt tells us that Dryden, Spenser and Ariosto,
Shakespeare and Chaucer (so he arranges them), are
the greatest masters of modern versification;
but he, in the next few sentences, leads us to suspect
that he really does not think much more reverently
of these great names than of Pope and of Johnson;
and that, if the whole truth were told, he is decidedly
of opinion that the only good master of versification,
in modern times, is—­Mr. Leigh Hunt.

Dryden, Mr. Hunt thinks, is apt to be artificial
in his style; or, in other words, he has improved
the harmony of our language from the rudeness of Chaucer,
whom Mr. Hunt (in a sentence which is not grammar,
p. xv) says that Dryden (though he spoke of and borrowed
from him) neither relished nor understood. Spenser,
he admits, was musical from pure taste, but Milton
was only, as he elegantly expresses it, “learnedly
so.” Being learned in music, is intelligible,
and, of Milton, true; but what can Mr. Hunt mean by
saying that Milton had “learnedly a musical
ear”? “Ariosto’s fine ear
and animal spirits gave a frank and
exquisite tone to all he said”—­what
does this mean?—­ a fine ear may, perhaps,
be said to give, as it contributes to, an exquisite
tone; but what have animal spirits to do here?
and what, in the matter of tones and sounds,
is the effect of frankness? We shrewdly
suspect that Mr. Hunt, with all his affectation of
Italian literature, knows very little of Ariosto;
it is clear that he knows nothing of Tasso. Of
Shakespeare he tells us, “that his versification
escapes us because he over-informed it with
knowledge and sentiment,” by which it appears
(as well, indeed, as by his own verses), that this
new Stagyrite thinks that good versification runs a
risk of being spoiled by having too much meaning
included in its lines.

To wind up the whole of this admirable, precise, and
useful criticism by a recapitulation as useful and
precise, he says, “all these are about as different
from Pope as the church organ is from the bell in the
steeple, or, to give him a more decorous comparison,
the song of the nightingale from that of the cuckoo.”—­p.
xv.

Now we own that what there is so indecorous
in the first comparison, or so especially decorous
in the second, we cannot discover; neither can we
make out whether Pope is the organ or the bell—­the
nightingale or the cuckoo; we suppose that Mr. Hunt
knows that Pope was called by his contemporaries the
nightingale, but we never heard Milton and
Dryden called cuckoos; or, if the comparison
is to be taken the other way, we apprehend that, though
Chaucer may be to Mr. Hunt’s ears a church
organ, Pope cannot, to any ear, sound like the
church bell.

But all this theory, absurd and ignorant as it is,
is really nothing to the practice of which it effects
to be the defence.

Page 256

Hear the warblings of Mr. Hunt’s nightingales.

A horseman is described—­

The patting hand, that best persuades
the check, And makes the quarrel up with a proud
neck, The thigh broad pressed, the spanning
palm upon it, And the jerked feather swaling
in the bonnet.—­p. 15.

Knights wear ladies’ favours—­

Some tied about their arm, some at the
breast,Some, with a drag, dangling from the
cap’s crest.—­p. 14.

Paulo pays his compliments to the destined bride of
his brother—­

And paid them with an air so frank and
bright,
As to a friend appreciated at sight;
That air, in short, which sets you at
your ease,
Without implying your perplexities,
That what with the surprize in every
way,
The hurry of the time, the appointed day,—­
She knew not how to object in her
confusion.—­p. 29.

The meeting of the brothers, on which the catastrophe
turns, is excellent: the politeness with which
the challenge is given would have delighted the heart
of old Caranza.

May I request, Sir, said the prince, and
frowned, Your ear a moment in the tilting ground?
There, brother? answered Paulo with an air
Surprized and shocked. Yes, brother,
cried he, there. The word smote crushingly.—­p.
92.

Before the duel, the following spirited explanation
takes place:

The prince spoke low,
And said: Before you answer what
you can,
I wish to tell you, as a gentleman,
That what you may confess—­
Will implicate no person known to you,
More than disquiet in its sleep
may do.—­p. 93.

Paulo falls—­and the event is announced
in these exquisite lines:

Her aged nurse—­
Who, shaking her old head, and
pressing close
Her withered lips to keep the
tears that rose—­p. 101.

“By the way,” does Mr. Leigh Hunt suppose
that the aged nurses of Rimini weep with their mouths?
or does he mistake crying for drivelling?—­In
fact, the young lady herself seems to have adopted
the same mode of weeping:

With that, a keen and quivering
glance of tears
Scarce moves her patient mouth,
and disappears.

But to the nurse.—­She introduces the messenger
of death to the princess, who communicates his story,
in pursuance of her command—­

Something, I’m sure, has happened—­tell
me what—­
I can bear all, though you may fancy
not.
Madam, replied the squire, you are, I
know,
All sweetness—­pardon me
for saying so.
My Master bade me say then, resumed
he,
That he spoke firmly, when he told
it me,—­
That I was also, madam, to your ear
Firmly to speak, and you firmly to hear,—­
That he was forced this day, whether
or no,
To combat with the prince;—­’—­p.
103.

Page 257

The second of Mr. Hunt’s new principles
he thus announces:

With the endeavour to recur to a freer
spirit of versification, I have joined one of still
greater importance—­that of having a free
and idiomatic cast of language. There is
a cant of art as well as of nature, though the former
is not so unpleasant as the latter, which affects
non-affectation.—­(What does all this mean?)—­But
the proper language of poetry is in fact
nothing different from that of real life, and depends
for its dignity upon the strength and sentiment of
what it speaks. It is only adding musical
modulation to what a fine understanding
might actually utter in the midst of its griefs or
enjoyments. The poet therefore should do as
Chaucer or Shakespeare did,—­not copy
what is obsolete or peculiar in either, any more than
they copied from their predecessors,—­but
use as much as possible an actual, existing language,—­omitting
of course mere vulgarisms and fugitive
phrases, which are the cant of ordinary discourse,
just as tragedy phrases, dead idioms, and
exaggerations of dignity, are of the artificial
style, and yeas, verilys, and exaggerations of simplicity,
are of the natural.—­p. xvi.

This passage, compared with the verses to which it
preludes, affords a more extraordinary instance of
self-delusion than even Mr. Hunt’s notion of
the merit of his versification; for if there be one
fault more eminently conspicuous and ridiculous in
Mr. Hunt’s work than another, it is,—­that
it is full of mere vulgarisms and fugitive
phrases, and that in every page the language is—­not
only not the actual, existing language, but
an ungrammatical, unauthorised, chaotic jargon, such
as we believe was never before spoken, much less written.

In what vernacular tongue, for instance, does Mr.
Hunt find a lady’s waist called clipsome
(p. 10)—­or the shout of a mob “enormous”
(p. 9)—­or a fit, lightsome;—­or
that a hero’s nose is “lightsomely
brought down from a forehead of clear-spirited thought”
(p. 46)—­or that his back “drops”
lightsomely in (p. 20). Where has he heard
of a quoit-like drop—­of swaling
a jerked feather—­of unbedinned music
(p. 11)—­of the death of leaping accents
(p. 32)—­of the thick reckoning of
a hoof (p. 33)—­of a pin-drop silence
(p. 17)—­a readable look (p. 20)—­a
half indifferent wonderment (p. 37)—­or
of

Boy-storied trees and passion-plighted
spots,—­p. 38.

of

Ships coming up with scattery light,—­p.
4.

or of self-knowledge being

Cored, after all, in our complacencies?—­p.
38.

We shall now produce a few instances of what “a
fine understanding might utter,” with “the
addition of musical modulation,” and of
the dignity and strength of Mr. Hunt’s
sentiments and expressions.

Page 258

A crowd, which divided itself into groups, is—­

—­the multitude,
Who got in clumps——­p.
26.

The impression made on these “clumps”
by the sight of the Princess, is thus “musically”
described:

There’s not in all that croud one
gallant being,
Whom, if his heart were whole, and rank
agreeing,
It would not fire to twice of what
he is,—­p. 10.

“Dignity and strength”—­

First came the trumpeters—­
And as they sit along their easy
way,
Stately and heaving to the croud
below.—­p. 12.

This word is deservedly a great favourite with the
poet; he heaves it in upon all occasions.

The deep talk heaves.—­p.
5.
With heav’d out tapestry
the windows glow.—­p. 6.
Then heave the croud.—­id.
And after a rude heave from side
to side.—­p. 7.
The marble bridge comes heaving
forth below.—­p. 28.

“Fine understanding”—­

The youth smiles up, and with a
lowly grace,Bending his lifted eyes—­p.
22.

This is very neat:

No peevishness there was—­
But a mute gush of hiding
tears from one,
Clasped to the core of him who
yet shed none.—­p. 83.

The heroine is suspected of wishing to have some share
in the choice of her own husband, which is thus elegantly
expressed:

She had stout notions on the marrying
score.—­p. 27.

This noble use of the word score is afterwards
carefully repeated in speaking of the Prince, her
husband—­

—­no suspicion could have touched
him more,
Than that of wanting on the generous
score.—­p. 48.

But though thus punctilious on the generous score,
his Highness had but a bad temper,

And kept no reckoning with his sweets
and sours.—­p. 47.

This, indeed, is somewhat qualified by a previous
observation, that—­

The worst of Prince Giovanni, as
his bride
Too quickly found, was an ill-tempered
pride.

How nobly does Mr. Hunt celebrate the combined charms
of the fair sex, and the country!

The two divinest things this world
HAS GOT,
A lovely woman in a rural spot!—­p.
58.

A rural spot, indeed, seems to inspire Mr. Hunt with
peculiar elegance and sweetness: for he says,
soon after, of Prince Paulo—­

For welcome grace, there rode not such
another,
Nor yet for strength, except his lordly
brother.
Was there a court day, or a sparkling
feast,
Or better still—­to my ideas,
at least!—­
A summer party in the green wood shade.—­p.
50.

So much for this new invented strength and
dignity: we shall add a specimen of his
syntax:

But fears like these he never entertain’d,
And had they crossed him, would have been
disdain’d.—­p. 50.

Page 259

* * * *
*

After these extracts, we have but one word more to
say of Mr. Hunt’s poetry; which is, that amidst
all his vanity, vulgarity, ignorance, and coarseness,
there are here and there some well-executed descriptions,
and occasionally a line of which the sense and the
expression are good—­ The interest of the
story itself is so great that we do not think it wholly
lost even in Mr. Hunt’s hands. He has, at
least, the merit of telling it with decency; and,
bating the qualities of versification, expression,
and dignity, on which he peculiarly piques himself,
and in which he has utterly failed, the poem is one
which, in our opinion at least, may be read with satisfaction
after GALT’S Tragedies.

Mr. Hunt prefixes to his work a dedication to Lord
Byron, in which he assumes a high tone, and talks
big of his “fellow-dignity” and
independence: what fellow-dignity may mean, we
know not; perhaps the dignity of a fellow;
but this we will say, that Mr. Hunt is not more unlucky
in his pompous pretension to versification and good
language, than he is in that which he makes, in this
dedication, to proper spirit, as he calls it,
and fellow-dignity; for we never, in so few
lines, saw so many clear marks of the vulgar impatience
of a low man, conscious and ashamed of his wretched
vanity, and labouring, with coarse flippancy, to scramble
over the bounds of birth and education, and fidget
himself into the stout-heartedness of being
familiar with a LORD.

OF SHAKESPEARE

[From The Quarterly Review, October, 1816]

Shakespeare’s Himself Again! or the Language
of the Poet asserted; being a full and dispassionate
Examen of the Readings and Interpretations of the
several Editors. Comprised in a Series of Notes,
Sixteen Hundred in Number, illustrative of the most
difficult Passages in his Plays—­to
the various editions of which the present Volumes
form a complete and necessary Supplement.
By ANDREW BECKET. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 730. 1816.

If the dead could be supposed to take any interest
in the integrity of their literary reputation, with
what complacency might we not imagine our great poet
to contemplate the labours of the present writer!
Two centuries have passed away since his death—­the
mind almost sinks under the reflection that he has
been all that while exhibited to us so “transmographied”
by the joint ignorance and malice of printers, critics,
etc., as to be wholly unlike himself. But—­post
nubila, Phoebus! Mr. Andrew Becket has at length
risen upon the world, and Shakespeare is about to
shine forth in genuine and unclouded glory!

What we have at present is a mere scantling of the
great work in procinctu—­[Greek:
pidakos ex ieraes oligaelizas]—­sixteen
hundred “restorations,” and no more!
But if these shall be favourably received, a complete
edition of the poet will speedily follow. Mr.
Becket has taken him to develop; and it is truly surprizing
to behold how beautiful he comes forth as the editor
proceeds in unrolling those unseemly and unnatural
rags in which he has hitherto been so disgracefully
wrapped:

Page 260

Tandem aperit vultum, et tectoria prima
reponit,—­
Incipit agnosci!—­

Mr. Becket has favoured us, in the Preface, with a
comparative estimate of the merits of his predecessors.
He does not, as may easily be conjectured, rate any
of them very highly; but he places Warburton at the
top of the scale, and Steevens at the bottom:
this, indeed, was to be expected. “Warburton,”
he says, “is the best, and Steevens the
worst of Shakespeare’s commentators”;
(p. xvii) and he ascribes it solely to his forbearance
that the latter is not absolutely crushed: it
not being in his nature, as he magnanimously insinuates,
“to break a butterfly upon a wheel!” Dr.
Johnson is shoved aside with very little ceremony;
Mr. Malone fares somewhat better; and the rest are
dismissed with the gentle valediction of Pandarus
to the Trojans—­“asses, fools, dolts!
chaff and bran! porridge after meat!” With respect
to our author himself, it is but simple justice to
declare, that he comes to the great work of “restoring
Shakespeare”—­not only with more negative
advantages than the unfortunate tribe of critics so
cavalierly dismissed, but than all who have aspired
to illumine the page of a defunct writer since the
days of Aristarchus. As far as we are enabled
to judge, Mr. Becket never examined an old play in
his life:—­he does not seem to have the
slightest knowledge of any writer, or any subject,
or any language that ever occupied the attention of
his contemporaries; and he possesses a mind as innocent
of all requisite information as if he had dropped,
with the last thunderstone, from the moon.

“Addison has well observed, that ’in works
of criticism it is absolutely necessary to have a
clear and logical head.’” (p.v.)
In this position, Mr. Becket cheerfully agrees with
him; and, indeed, it is sufficiently manifest, that
without the internal conviction of enjoying that indispensable
advantage, he would not have favoured the public with
those matchless “restorations”; a few specimens
of which we now proceed to lay before them. Where
all are alike admirable, there is no call for selection;
we shall therefore open the volumes at random, and
trust to fortune.

“Hamlet. For who would
bear the whips and scorns of time?”

This reading, Mr. Becket says, he cannot admit; and
he says well: since it appears that Shakespeare
wrote—­

“For who would bear the scores
of weapon’d time?”

using scores in the sense of stripes.
Formerly, i.e., when Becket was in his sallad
days, he augured, he says, that the true reading
was—­

—­“the scores of whip-hand
time.”

Time having always the whip-hand, the advantage;
but he now reverts to the other emendation; though,
as he modestly hints, the epithet whip-hand
(which he still regards with parental fondness) will
perhaps be thought to have much of the manner of Shakespeare.—­Vol.
i, p. 43.

Page 261

“Horatio.—­While
they, distill’d
Almost to jelly with the act of fear,
Stand dumb, and speak not to him!”

We had been accustomed to find no great difficulty
here: the words seemed, to us, at least, to express
the usual effect of inordinate terror—­but
we gladly acknowledge our mistake. “The
passage is not to be understood.” How should
it, when both the pointing and the language are corrupt?
Read, as Shakespeare gave it—­

—­“While they bestill’d
Almost to gelee with the act.
Of fear
Stand dumb,” &c.—­that
is, petrified (or rather icefied) p. 13.

“Lear. And my poor fool
is hang’d!”

With these homely words, which burst from the poor
old king on reverting to the fate of his loved Cordelia,
whom he then holds in his arms, we have been always
deeply affected, and therefore set them down as one
of the thousand proofs of the poet’s intimate
knowledge of the human heart. But Mr. Becket
has made us ashamed of our simplicity and our tears.
Shakespeare had no such “lenten” language
in his thoughts; he wrote, as Mr. Becket tells us,

“And my pure soot is hang’d!”

Poor, he adds, might be easily mistaken for pure;
while the s in soot (sweet) was scarcely
discernible from the f, or the t from
the l.—­p. 176.

We are happy to find that so much can be offered in
favour of the old printers. And yet—­were
it not that the genuine text is always to be preferred—­we
could almost wish that the critic had left their blunder
as it stood.

“Wolsey.—­that
his bones
May have a tomb of orphans’ tears
wept on them.”

A tomb of tears is ridiculous. I
read—­a coomb of tears—­a
coomb
is a liquid measure containing forty gallons.
Thus the expression,
which was before absurd, becomes forcible
and just.—­vol. ii, p. 134.

It does indeed!

“Sir Andrew. I sent
thee six-pence for thy leman (mistress): had’st
it?” Read as Shakespeare wrote: “I
sent thee sixpence for thy lemma”—­lemma
is properly an argument, or proposition assumed,
and is used by Sir Andrew Aguecheek for a story.—­p.
335.

“Viola. She pined in
thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy.”—­Correct
it thus:

“She pined in thought
And with agrein and hollow
melancholy.”—­p. 339.

“Iago. I have rubb’d
this young quat almost to the sense,
And he grows angry”—­

that is, or rather was, according to our homely
apprehension, I have rubb’d this pimple (Roderigo)
almost to bleeding:—­but, no; Mr. Becket
has furnished us not only with the genuine words, but
the meaning of Shakespeare—­

Page 262

I have fubb’d this young
quat—­Quat, or cat, appears
to be a contraction of cater-cousin—­and
this reading will be greatly strengthened when it
is remembered that Roderigo was really the intimate
of Iago.—­p. 204.

In a subsequent passage, “I am as melancholy
as a gibb’d cat”—­we are told
that cat is not the domestic animal of that
name, but a contraction of catin, a woman of
the town. But, indeed, Mr. Becket possesses a
most wonderful faculty for detecting these latent
contractions and filling them up. Thus,

“Parolles. Sir, he will
steal an egg out of a cloister.” Read (as
Shakespeare wrote), “Sir, he will steal an
Ag (i.e., an Agnes) out of a cloister.”
Agnes is the name of a woman, and may easily
stand for chastity.—­p. 325.

No doubt.

“Carter. Prithee, Tom,
put a few flocks in Cut’s saddle; the poor
beast is wrung in the withers out of all
cess.”

Out of all cess, we used to think meant, in vulgar
phraseology, out of all measure, very much, &c.—­but
see how foolishly!

Cess is a mere contraction of cessibility,
which signifies thequality of receding, and may very
well stand for yielding, as
spoken of a tumour.—­p. 5.

“Hamlet. A cry of players.”

This we once thought merely a sportive expression
for a company of players, but Mr. Becket has
undeceived us—­“Cry (he tells
us) is contracted from cryptic, and cryptic
is precisely of the same import as mystery.”—­p.
53. How delightful it is when learning and judgment
walk thus hand in hand! But enough—­

—­“the
sweetest honey
Is loathsome in its own deliciousness”—­

and we would not willingly cloy our readers.
Sufficient has been produced to encourage them—­not
perhaps to contend for the possession of the present
volumes, though Mr. Becket conscientiously affirms,
in his title-page, that “they form a complete
and necessary supplement to every former edition”—­but,
with us, to look anxiously forward to the great work
in preparation.

Meanwhile we have gathered some little consolation
from what is already in our hands. Very often,
on comparing the dramas of the present day (not even
excepting Mr. Tobin’s) with those of Elizabeth’s
age, we have been tempted to think that we were born
too late, and to exclaim with the poet—­

but we now see that unless Mr. Andrew Becket had also
been produced at that early period, we should have
derived no extraordinary degree of satisfaction from
witnessing the first appearance of Shakespeare’s
plays, since it is quite clear that we could not have
understood them.

Page 263

One difficulty yet remains. We scarcely think
that the managers will have the confidence, in future,
to play Shakespeare as they have been accustomed to
do; and yet, to present him, as now so happily “restored,”
would, for some time at least, render him caviare
to the general. We know that Livius Andronicus,
when grown hoarse with repeated declamation, was allowed
a second rate actor, who stood at his back and spoke
while he gesticulated, or gesticulated while he spoke.
A hint may be borrowed from this fact. We therefore
propose that Mr. Andrew Becket be forthwith taken
into the pay of the two theatres, and divided between
them. He may then be instructed to follow the
dramatis personae of our great poet’s
plays on the stage, and after each of them has made
his speech in the present corrupt reading, to pronounce
aloud the words as “restored” by himself.
This may have an awkward effect at first; but a season
or two will reconcile the town to it; Shakespeare may
then be presented in his genuine language, or, as
our author better expresses it, be HIMSELF AGAIN.

ON MOXON’S SONNETS

[From The Quarterly Review, July, 1837]

Sonnets by EDWARD MOXON. Second Edition.
London, 1837.

This is quite a dandy of a book. Some
seventy pages of drawing-paper—­ fifty-five
of which are impressed each with a single sonnet in
all the luxury of type, while the rest are decked
out with vignettes of nymphs in clouds and bowers,
and Cupids in rose-bushes and cockle-shells. And
all these coxcombries are the appendages of, as it
seems to us, as little intellect as the rings and
brooches of the Exquisite in a modern novel.
We shall see presently, by what good fortune so moderate
a poet has found so liberal a publisher.

We are no great admirers of the sonnet at its best—­concurring
in Dr. Johnson’s opinion that it does not suit
the genius of our language, and that the great examples
of Shakespeare and Milton have failed to domesticate
it with us. It seems to be, even in master hands,
that species of composition which is at once the most
artificial and the least effective, which bears the
appearance of the greatest labour and produces the
least pleasure. Its peculiar and unvaried construction
must inevitably inflict upon it something of pedantry
and monotony, and although some powerful minds have
used it as a form for condensing and elaborating a
particular train of thought—­an Iliad
in a nutshell—­yet the vast majority
of sonneteers employ it as an economical expedient,
by which one idea can be expanded into fourteen lines—­fourteen
lines into one page—­and, as we see, fifty-four
pages into a costly volume.

The complex construction, which at first sight seems
a difficulty, is, in fact, like all mechanism, a great
saving of labour to the operator. A sonnet almost
makes itself, as a musical snuff-box plays a tune,
or rather as a cotton Jenny spins twist.
When a would-be poet has collected in his memory a
few of what may have struck him as poetical ideas,
he puts them into his machine, and after fourteen turns,
out comes a sonnet, or—­if it be his pleasure
to spin out his reminiscences very fine—­a
dozen sonnets.

Page 264

Mr. Moxon inscribes as a motto on his title-page four
lines of Mr. Wordsworth’s vindication of his
own use of the sonnet-form—­

In truth, the prison, into which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence
to me,
In sundry moods ’twas pastime to
be bound
Within the sonnet’s scanty
plot of ground.

Yes, Mr. Moxon, to him perhaps, but not to
every one—­the “plot of ground”
which is “scanty” to an elephant
is a wilderness to a mouse; and the garment in which
Wordsworth might feel straitened hangs flabby about
a puny imitator. There seems no great modesty
in the estimate which Mr. Moxon thus exhibits of his
own superior powers, but we fear there is, at least,
as much modesty as truth—­for really, so
far from being “bound” within the
narrow limit of the sonnet, it seems to us to be

—­a world too wide
For his shrunk shank.

Ordinary sonneteers, as we have said, will spin a
single thought through the fourteen lines. Mr.,
Moxon will draw you out a single thought into fourteen
sonnets:—­and these are his best—­for
most of the others appear to us mere soap bubbles,
very gay and gaudy, but which burst at the fourteenth
line and leave not the trace of an idea behind.
Of two or three Mr. Moxon has kindly told us the meaning,
which, without that notice, we confess we should never
have guessed.

* * * *
*

Another of the same genus—­though, he had
just told us

My love I can compare
with nought on earth—­

is like nought on earth we ever read but Dean
Swift’s song of similes. I will prove,
he says, that

A swan—­
A fawn—­
An artless lamb—­
A hawthorn tree—­
A willow—­
A laburnum—­
A dream—­
A rainbow—­
Diana—­
Aurora—­
A dove that singeth—­
A lily,—­and finally,
Venus herself!
—­I in truth will prove
These are not half
so fair as she I love.

Sonnet iii, p. 43.

Such heterogeneous compliments remind us of Shacabac’s
gallantry to Beda in Blue Beard: “Ah,
you little rogue, you have a prettier mouth than
an elephant, and you know it!”—­A
fawn-coloured countenance rivalling in fairness
a laburnum blossom, seems to us a more dubious
type of female beauty than even an elephant’s
mouth.

Love, it may be said, has carried away better
poets and graver men than Mr. Moxon seems to be, into
such namby-pamby nonsense; but Mr. Moxon is just as
absurd in his grief or his musings, as
in his love.

When he hears a nightingale—­“sad
Philomel!”—­he concludes that the bird
was originally created for no other purpose than to
prophesy in Paradise the fall of man, or, as
he chooses to collocate the words,

Page 265

Prophetic to have mourned
of man the fall,—­p. 9.

but he does not tell us what she has been doing ever
since.

When he sees two Cumberland streams—­the
Brathay and Rothay—­flowing down, first
to a confluence, and afterwards to the sea, he fancies
“a soul-knit pair,” man and wife,
mingling their waters and gliding to their final haven—­

in
kindred love,
The haven Contemplation sees
above!

Below, he would—­following his allegory—­have
said; but rhyme forbade—­ and allegories
are not so headstrong on the banks of the Brathay
as on those of the Nile.

A sonnet on Thomson’s grave is a fine specimen
of empty sounds and solid nonsense:—­

Whene’er I linger, Thomson,
near thy tomb,
Where Thamis—­

“Classic Cam” will be somewhat
amazed to hear his learned brother called Thamis—­

Where Thamis urges
his majestic way,
And the Muse loves at twilight
hour to stray,
I think how in thy theme ALL seasons
BLOOM;—­

What, all four?—­autumn, nay, winter—­blooming?

What heart so cold that of thy
fame has heard,
And pauses not to gaze upon
each scene.

We are inclined to be very indulgent to what is called
a confusion of metaphors, when it arises from a rush
of ideas—­but when it is produced by an
author’s having no idea at all, we can hardly
forgive him for equipping the Heart with eyes,
ears, and legs:—­he might just as well have
said that on entering Twickenham church to visit the
tomb, every Heart would take off its hat,
and on going out again would put its hand in
its pockets to fee the sexton.

And pauses not to gaze upon each scene
That was familiar to thy raptured
view,
Those walks beloved by thee
while I pursue,
Musing upon the years that intervene—­

Why this line intervenes or what it means we
do not see—­it seems inserted just to make
up the number—­

Methinks, as eve descends, a hymn of praise
To thee, their bard, the sister Seasons
raise!

That is, as we understand it, ALL the Seasons meet
together on one or more evenings of the year,
to sing a hymn to the memory of Thompson. This
simultaneous entree of the Four Seasons would
be a much more appropriate fancy for the opera stage
than for Twickenham meadows.

Such are the tame extravagances—­the vapid
affectations—­the unmeaning mosaic which
Mr. Moxon has laboriously tesselated into fifty and
four sonnets. If he had been—­as all
this childishness at first led us to believe—­a
very young man—­we should have discussed
the matter with him in a more conciliatory and persuasive
tone; but we find that he is, what we must call, an
old offender. We have before us two little volumes

Page 266

of what he entitles poetry—­one dated 1826,
and the other 1829—­which, though more laughable,
are not in substance more absurd than his new production.
From the first of these we shall extract two or three
stanzas of the introductory poem, not only on account
of their intrinsic merit, but because they state,
pretty roundly, Mr. Moxon’s principles of poetry.
He modestly disclaims all rivalry with Pope, Byron,
Moore, Campbell, Scott, Rogers, Goldsmith, Dryden,
Gray, Spenser, Milton, and Shakespeare; but he, at
the same time, intimates that he follows, what he
thinks, a truer line of poetry than the before-named
illustrious, but, in this point, mistaken individuals.

’Tis not a poem with learning fraught,
To that I ne’er pretended;
Nor yet with Pope’s fine touches
wrought,From that my time prevented.

We skip four intermediate stanzas; then comes

Milton divine and great Shakespeare
With reverence I mention;
My name with theirs shall ne’er
appear,’Tis far from my
intention!
If poetry, as one pretends,
Be all imagination!
Why then, at once, my bardship ends—­
’Mong prose I take my
station.

Moxon’s Poems, p. 81, Ed. 1826.

But as "common sense" must see, says Mr. Moxon,
that imagination can have nothing to do with
poetry, he engages to pursue his tuneful vocation,
subject to one condition—­

You’ll hear no more from me, If
critics prove unkind; My next in simple
prose must be, Unless I favour find!

We regret that some kind—­or, as
Mr. Moxon would have thought it, unkind—­critic,
did not, on the appearance of this first volume, confirm
his own misgivings that he had been all this time,
like the man in the farce, talking not only prose,
but nonsense into the bargain: this disagreeable
information the pretension of his recent publication
obliges us to convey to him. The fact is, that
the volume at first struck us with serious alarm.
Its typographical splendour led us to fear that this
style of writing was getting into fashion; and the
hints about "classic Cam" seemed to impute
the production to one of our Universities: on
turning, with some curiosity, to the title-page, for
the name of the too indulgent bookseller who had bestowed
such unmerited embellishment on a work which we think
of so little value—­we found none;
and on further inquiry learned that Dover Street,
Piccadilly, and not the banks of "classic Cam"
is the seat of this sonneteering muse—­in
short, that Mr. Moxon, the bookseller, is his own poet,
and that Mr. Moxon, the poet, is his own bookseller.
This discovery at once calmed both our anxieties—­it
relieved the university of Cambridge from an awful
responsibility, which might have called down upon it
the vengeance of Lord Radnor; and it accounted—­without

Page 267

any imputation on the public taste—­for
the extraordinary care and cost with which the paternal
solicitude of the poet-publisher had adorned his own
volume. Mr. Moxon seems to be—­like
most sonneteers—­a man of amiable disposition,
and to have an ear—­as he certainly has a
memory—­for poetry; and—­if
he had not been an old hand—­we should not
have presumed to say that he is incapable of anything
better than this tumid commonplace. But, however
that may be, we do earnestly exhort him to abandon
the self-deluding practice of being his own publisher.
Whatever may have been said in disparagement of the
literary taste of the booksellers, it will at least
be admitted that their experience of public opinion
and a due attention to their own pecuniary interest,
enable them to operate as a salutary check upon the
blind and presumptive vanity of small authors.
The necessity of obtaining the "imprimatur"
of a publisher is a very wholesome restraint, from
which Mr. Moxon—­unluckily for himself and
for us—­found himself relieved. If
he could have looked at his own work with the impartiality,
and perhaps the good taste, that he would have exercised
on that of a stranger, he would have saved
himself a good deal of expense and vexation—­and
we should have been spared the painful necessity
of contrasting the ambitious pretensions of his volume
with its very moderate literary merit.

ON “VANITY FAIR” AND “JANE EYRE”

[From The Quarterly Review, December, 1848]

1. Vanity Fair; a Novel without a Hero. By
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. London, 1848.

A remarkable novel is a great event for English society.
It is a kind of common friend, about whom people can
speak the truth without fear of being compromised,
and confess their emotions without being ashamed.
We are a particularly shy and reserved people, and
set about nothing so awkwardly as the simple art of
getting really acquainted with each other. We
meet over and over again in what is conventionally
called “easy society,” with the tacit
understanding to go so far and no farther; to be as
polite as we ought to be, and as intellectual as we
can; but mutually and honourably to forbear lifting
those veils which each spreads over his inner sentiments
and sympathies. For this purpose a host of devices
have been contrived by which all the forms of friendship
may be gone through, without committing ourselves to
one spark of the spirit. We fly with eagerness
to some common ground in which each can take the liveliest
interest, without taking the slightest in the world
in his companion. Our various fashionable manias,
for charity one season, for science the next, are
only so many clever contrivances for keeping our neighbour
at arm’s length. We can attend committees,
and canvass for subscribers, and archaeologise, and

Page 268

geologise, and take ether with our fellow Christians
for a twelvemonth, as we might sit cross-legged and
smoke the pipe of fraternity with a Turk for the same
period—­and know at the end of the time as
little of the real feelings of the one as we should
about the domestic relations of the other. But
there are ways and means for lifting the veil which
equally favour our national idiosyncrasy; and a new
and remarkable novel is one of them—­especially
the nearer it comes to real life. We invite our
neighbour to a walk with the deliberate and malicious
object of getting thoroughly acquainted with him.
We ask no impertinent questions—­ we proffer
no indiscreet confidences—­we do not even
sound him, ever so delicately, as to his opinion of
a common friend, for he would be sure not to say,
lest we should go and tell; but we simply discuss Becky
Sharp, or Jane Eyre, and our object is answered at
once.

There is something about these two new and noticeable
characters which especially compels everybody to speak
out. They are not to be dismissed with a few
commonplace moralities and sentimentalities. They
do not fit any ready-made criticism. They give
the most stupid something to think of, and the most
reserved something to say; the most charitable too
are betrayed into home comparisons which they usually
condemn, and the most ingenious stumble into paradoxes
which they can hardly defend. Becky and Jane
also stand well side by side both in their analogies
and their contrasts. Both the ladies are governesses,
and both make the same move in society; the one, in
Jane Eyre phraseology, marrying her “master,”
and the other her master’s son. Neither
starts in life with more than a moderate capital of
good looks—­Jane Eyre with hardly that—­for
it is the fashion now-a-days with novelists to give
no encouragement to the insolence of mere beauty,
but rather to prove to all whom it may concern how
little a sensible woman requires to get on with in
the world. Both have also an elfish kind of nature,
with which they divine the secrets of other hearts,
and conceal those of their own; and both rejoice in
that peculiarity of feature which Mademoiselle de Luzy
has not contributed to render popular, viz.,
green eyes. Beyond this, however, there is no
similarity either in the minds, manners, or fortunes
of the two heroines. They think and act upon
diametrically opposite principles—­ at least
so the author of “Jane Eyre” intends us
to believe—­and each, were they to meet,
which we should of all things enjoy to see them do,
would cordially despise and abominate the other.
Which of the two, however, would most successfully
dupe the other is a different question, and
one not so easy to decide; though we have our own ideas
upon the subject.

Page 269

We must discuss “Vanity Fair” first, which,
much as we were entitled to expect from its author’s
pen, has fairly taken us by surprise. We were
perfectly aware that Mr. Thackeray had of old assumed
the jester’s habit, in order the more unrestrainedly
to indulge the privilege of speaking the truth;—­we
had traced his clever progress through “Fraser’s
Magazine” and the ever-improving pages of “Punch”—­which
wonder of the time has been infinitely obliged to
him—­but still we were little prepared for
the keen observation, the deep wisdom, and the consummate
art which he has interwoven in the slight texture and
whimsical pattern of “Vanity Fair.”
Everybody, it is to be supposed, has read the volume
by this time; and even for those who have not, it is
not necessary to describe the order of the story.
It is not a novel, in the common acceptation of the
word, with a plot purposely contrived to bring about
certain scenes, and develop certain characters, but
simply a history of those average sufferings, pleasures,
penalties, and rewards to which various classes of
mankind gravitate as naturally and certainly in this
world as the sparks fly upward. It is only the
same game of life which every player sooner or later
makes for himself—­were he to have a hundred
chances, and shuffle the cards of circumstance every
time. It is only the same busy, involved drama
which may be seen at any time by any one, who is not
engrossed with the magnified minutiae of his own petty
part, but with composed curiosity looks on to the stage
where his fellow-men and women are the actors; and
that not even heightened by the conventional colouring
which Madame de Stael philosophically declares that
fiction always wants in order to make up for its not
being truth. Indeed, so far from taking any advantage
of this novelist’s licence, Mr. Thackeray has
hardly availed himself of the natural average of remarkable
events that really do occur in this life. The
battle of Waterloo, it is true, is introduced; but,
as far as regards the story, it brings about only
one death and one bankruptcy, which might either of
them have happened in a hundred other ways. Otherwise
the tale runs on, with little exception, in that humdrum
course of daily monotony, out of which some people
coin materials to act, and others excuses to doze,
just as their dispositions may be.

It is this reality which is at once the charm and
the misery here. With all these unpretending
materials it is one of the most amusing, but also
one of the most distressing books we have read for
many a long year. We almost long for a little
exaggeration and improbability to relieve us of that
sense of dead truthfulness which weighs down our hearts,
not for the Amelias and Georges of the story, but
for poor kindred human nature. In one light this
truthfulness is even an objection. With few exceptions
the personages are too like our every-day selves and
neighbours to draw any distinct moral from. We
cannot see our way clearly. Palliations of the

Page 270

bad and disappointments in the good are perpetually
obstructing our judgment, by bringing what should
decide it too close to that common standard of experience
in which our only rule of opinion is charity.
For it is only in fictitious characters which are
highly coloured for one definite object, or in notorious
personages viewed from a distance, that the course
of the true moral can be seen to run straight—­once
bring the individual with his life and circumstances
closely before you, and it is lost to the mental eye
in the thousand pleas and witnesses, unseen and unheard
before, which rise up to overshadow it. And what
are all these personages in “Vanity Fair”
but feigned names for our own beloved friends and
acquaintances, seen under such a puzzling cross-light
of good in evil, and evil in good, of sins and sinnings
against, of little to be praised virtues, and much
to be excused vices, that we cannot presume to moralise
upon them—­not even to judge them,—­content
to exclaim sorrowfully with the old prophet, “Alas!
my brother!” Every actor on the crowded stage
of “Vanity Fair” represents some type of
that perverse mixture of humanity in which there is
ever something not wholly to approve or to condemn.
There is the desperate devotion of a fond heart to
a false object, which we cannot respect; there is the
vain, weak man, half good and half bad, who is more
despicable in our eyes than the decided villain.
There are the irretrievably wretched education, and
the unquenchably manly instincts, both contending in
the confirmed roue, which melt us to the tenderest
pity. There is the selfishness and self-will
which the possessor of great wealth and fawning relations
can hardly avoid. There is the vanity and fear
of the world, which assist mysteriously with pious
principles in keeping a man respectable; there are
combinations of this kind of every imaginable human
form and colour, redeemed but feebly by the steady
excellence of an awkward man, and the genuine heart
of a vulgar woman, till we feel inclined to tax Mr.
Thackeray with an under estimate of our nature, forgetting
that Madame de Stael is right after all, and that without
a little conventional rouge no human conplexion can
stand the stage-lights of fiction.

But if these performers give us pain, we are not ashamed
to own, as we are speaking openly, that the chief
actress herself gives us none at all. For there
is of course a principal pilgrim in Vanity Fair, as
much as in its emblematical original, Bunyan’s
“Progress”; only unfortunately this one
is travelling the wrong way. And we say “unfortunately”
merely by way of courtesy, for in reality we care
little about the matter. No, Becky—­our
hearts neither bleed for you, nor cry out against you.
You are wonderfully clever, and amusing, and accomplished,
and intelligent, and the Soho ateliers were
not the best nurseries for a moral training; and you
were married early in life to a regular blackleg, and
you have had to live upon your wits ever since, which

Page 271

is not an improving sort of maintenance; and there
is much to be said for and against; but still you
are not one of us, and there is an end to our sympathies
and censures. People who allow their feelings
to be lacerated by such a character and career as
yours, are doing both you and themselves great injustice.
No author could have openly introduced a near connexion
of Satan’s into the best London society, nor
would the moral end intended have been answered by
it; but really and honestly, considering Becky in
her human character, we know of none which so thoroughly
satisfies our highest beau ideal of feminine
wickedness, with so slight a shock to our feelings
and properties. It is very dreadful, doubtless,
that Becky neither loved the husband who loved her,
nor the child of her own flesh and blood, nor indeed
any body but herself; but, as far as she is concerned,
we cannot pretend to be scandalized—­for
how could she without a heart? It is very shocking
of course that she committed all sorts of dirty tricks,
and jockeyed her neighbours, and never cared what
she trampled under foot if it happened to obstruct
her step; but how could she be expected to do otherwise
without a conscience? The poor little woman was
most tryingly placed; she came into the world without
the customary letters of credit upon those two great
bankers of humanity, “Heart and Conscience,”
and it was no fault of hers if they dishonoured all
her bills. All she could do in this dilemma was
to establish the firmest connexion with the inferior
commercial branches of “Sense and Tact,”
who secretly do much business in the name of the head
concern, and with whom her “fine frontal development”
gave her unlimited credit. She saw that selfishness
was the metal which the stamp of heart was suborned
to pass; that hypocrisy was the homage that vice rendered
to virtue; that honesty was, at all events, acted,
because it was the best policy; and so she practised
the arts of selfishness and hypocrisy like anybody
else in Vanity Fair, only with this difference, that
she brought them to their highest possible pitch of
perfection. For why is it that, looking round
in this world, we find plenty of characters to compare
with her up to a certain pitch, but none which reach
her actual standard? Why is it that, speaking
of this friend or that, we say in the tender mercies
of our hearts, “No, she is not quite
so bad as Becky?” We fear not only because she
has more heart and conscience, but also because she
has less cleverness.

No; let us give Becky her due. There is enough
in this world of ours, as we all know, to provoke
a saint, far more a poor little devil like her.
She had none of those fellow-feelings which make us
wondrous kind. She saw people around her cowards
in vice, and simpletons in virtue, and she had no
patience with either, for she was as little the one
as the other herself. She saw women who loved
their husbands and yet teazed them, and ruining their

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children although they doated upon them, and she sneered
at their utter inconsistency. Wickedness or goodness,
unless coupled with strength, were alike worthless
to her. That weakness which is the blessed pledge
of our humanity, was to her only the despicable badge
of our imperfection. She thought, it might be,
of her master’s words, “Fallen Cherub!
to be weak is to be miserable!” and wondered
how we could be such fools as first to sin and then
to be sorry. Becky’s light was defective,
but she acted up to it. Her goodness goes as far
as good temper, and her principles as far as shrewd
sense, and we may thank her consistency for showing
us what they are both worth.

It is another thing to pretend to settle whether such
a character be prima facie impossible, though
devotion to the better sex might well demand the assertion.
There are mysteries of iniquity, under the semblance
of man and woman, read of in history, or met with in
the unchronicled sufferings of private life, which
would almost make us believe that the powers of Darkness
occasionally made use of this earth for a Foundling
Hospital, and sent their imps to us, already provided
with a return-ticket. We shall not decide on the
lawfulness or otherwise of any attempt to depict such
importations; we can only rest perfectly satisfied
that, granting the author’s premises, it is impossible
to imagine them carried out with more felicitous skill
and more exquisite consistency than in the heroine
of “Vanity Fair.” At all events, the
infernal regions have no reason to be ashamed of little
Becky, nor the ladies either: she has, at least,
all the cleverness of the sex.

The great charm, therefore, and comfort of Becky is,
that we may study her without any compunctions.
The misery of this life is not the evil that we see,
but the good and the evil which are so inextricably
twisted together. It is that perpetual memento
ever meeting one—­

How in this vile world below
Noblest things find vilest using,

that is so very distressing to those who have hearts
as well as eyes. But Becky relieves them of all
this pain—­at least in her own person.
Pity would be thrown away upon one who has not heart
enough for it to ache even for herself. Becky
is perfectly happy, as all must be who excel in what
they love best. Her life is one exertion of successful
power. Shame never visits her, for “’Tis
conscience that makes cowards of us all”—­and
she has none. She realizes that ne plus ultra
of sublunary comfort which it was reserved for a Frenchman
to define—­the blessed combination of "le
bon estomac et le mauvais coeur": for Becky
adds to her other good qualities that of an excellent
digestion.

Page 273

Upon the whole, we are not afraid to own that we rather
enjoy her ignis fatuus course, dragging the
weak and the vain and the selffish [Transcriber’s
note: sic], through mud and mire, after her, and
acting all parts, from the modest rushlight to the
gracious star, just as it suits her. Clever little
imp that she is! What exquisite tact she shows!—­what
unflagging good humour!—­what ready self-possession!
Becky never disappoints us; she never even makes us
tremble. We know that her answer will come exactly
suiting her one particular object, and frequently
three or four more in prospect. What respect,
too, she has for those decencies which more virtuous,
but more stupid humanity, often disdains! What
detection of all that is false and mean! What
instinct for all that is true and great! She
is her master’s true pupil in that: she
knows what is really divine as well as he, and bows
before it. She honours Dobbin in spite of his
big feet; she respects her husband more than ever
she did before, perhaps for the first time, at the
very moment when he is stripping not only her jewels,
but name, honour, and comfort off her.

We are not so sure either whether we are justified
in calling hers "le mauvais coeur." Becky does
not pursue any one vindictively; she never does gratuitous
mischief. The fountain is more dry than poisoned.
She is even generous—­when she can afford
it. Witness that burst of plain speaking in Dobbin’s
favour to the little dolt Amelia, for which we forgive
her many a sin. ’Tis true she wanted to
get rid of her; but let that pass. Becky was
a thrifty dame, and liked to despatch two birds with
one stone. And she was honest, too, after a fashion.
The part of wife she acts at first as well, and better
than most; but as for that of mother, there she fails
from the beginning. She knew that maternal love
was no business of hers—­that a fine frontal
development could give her no help there—­and
puts so little spirit into her imitation that no one
could be taken in for a moment. She felt that
that bill, of all others, would be sure to be dishonoured,
and it went against her conscience—­we mean
her sense—­to send it in.

In short, the only respect in which Becky’s
course gives us pain is when it locks itself into
that of another, and more genuine child of this earth.
No one can regret those being entangled in her nets
whose vanity and meanness of spirit alone led them
into its meshes—­such are rightly served;
but we do grudge her that real sacred thing called
love, even of a Rawdon Crawley, who has more
of that self-forgetting, all-purifying feeling for
his little evil spirit than many a better man has for
a good woman. We do grudge Becky a heart,
though it belong only to a swindler. Poor, sinned
against, vile, degraded, but still true-hearted Rawdon!—­you
stand next in our affections and sympathies to honest
Dobbin himself. It was the instinct of a good
nature which made the Major feel that the stamp of

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the Evil One was upon Becky; and it was the stupidity
of a good nature which made the Colonel never suspect
it. He was a cheat, a black-leg, an unprincipled
dog; but still “Rawdon is a man, and
be hanged to him,” as the Rector says. We
follow him through the illustrations, which are, in
many instances, a delightful enhancement to the text—­as
he stands there, with his gentle eyelid, coarse moustache,
and foolish chin, bringing up Becky’s coffee-cup
with a kind of dumb fidelity; or looking down at little
Rawdon with a more than paternal tenderness.
All Amelia’s philoprogenitive idolatries do
not touch us like one fond instinct of “stupid
Rawdon.”

Dobbin sheds a halo over all the long-necked, loose-jointed,
Scotch-looking gentlemen of our acquaintance.
Flat feet and flap ears seem henceforth incompatible
with evil. He reminds us of one of the sweetest
creations that have appeared from any modern pen—­that
plain, awkward, loveable “Long Walter,”
in Lady Georgina Fullerton’s beautiful novel
of “Grantley Manor.” Like him, too,
in his proper self-respect; for Dobbin—­lumbering,
heavy, shy, and absurdly over modest as the ugly fellow
is—­is yet true to himself. At one time
he seems to be sinking into the mere abject dangler
after Amelia; but he breaks his chains like a man,
and resumes them again like a man, too, although half
disenchanted of his amiable delusion.

But to return for a moment to Becky. The only
criticism we would offer is one which the author has
almost disarmed by making her mother a Frenchwoman.
The construction of this little clever monster is
diabolically French. Such a lusus naturae
as a woman without a heart and conscience would, in
England, be a mere brutal savage, and poison half
a village. France is the land for the real Syren,
with the woman’s face and the dragon’s
claws. The genus of Pigeon and Laffarge claims
it for its own—­only that our heroine takes
a far higher class by not requiring the vulgar matter
of fact of crime to develop her full powers.
It is an affront to Becky’s tactics to believe
that she could ever be reduced to so low a resource,
or, that if she were, anybody would find it out.
We, therefore, cannot sufficiently applaud the extreme
discretion with which Mr. Thackeray has hinted at the
possibly assistant circumstances of Joseph Sedley’s
dissolution. A less delicacy of handling would
have marred the harmony of the whole design. Such
a casualty as that suggested to our imagination was
not intended for the light net of Vanity Fair to draw
on shore; it would have torn it to pieces. Besides
it is not wanted. Poor little Becky is bad enough
to satisfy the most ardent student of “good
books.” Wickedness, beyond a certain pitch,
gives no increase of gratification even to the sternest
moralist; and one of Mr. Thackeray’s excellences
is the sparing quantity he consumes. The whole
use, too, of the work—­that of generously
measuring one another by this standard—­is

Page 275

lost, the moment you convict Becky of a capital crime.
Who can, with any face, liken a dear friend to a murderess?
Whereas now there are no little symptoms of fascinating
ruthlessness, graceful ingratitude, or ladylike selfishness,
observable among our charming acquaintance, that we
may not immediately detect to an inch, and more effectually
intimidate by the simple application of the Becky
gauge than by the most vehement use of all ten commandments.
Thanks to Mr. Thackeray, the world is now provided
with an idea, which, if we mistake not, will
be the skeleton in the corner of every ball-room and
boudoir for a long time to come. Let us leave
it intact in its unique fount and freshness—­a
Becky, and nothing more. We should, therefore,
advise our readers to cut out that picture of our heroine’s
“Second Appearance as Clytemnestra,” which
casts so uncomfortable a glare over the latter part
of the volume, and, disregarding all hints and inuendoes,
simply to let the changes and chances of this moral
life have due weight in their minds. Jos had
been much in India. His was a bad life; he ate
and drank most imprudently, and his digestion was not
to be compared with Becky’s. No respectable
office would have ensured “Waterloo Sedley.”

“Vanity Fair” is pre-eminently a novel
of the day—­not in the vulgar sense, of
which there are too many, but as a literal photograph
of the manners and habits of the nineteenth century,
thrown on to paper by the light of a powerful mind;
and one also of the most artistic effect. Mr.
Thackeray has a peculiar adroitness in leading on the
fancy, or rather memory of his readers from one set
of circumstances to another by the seeming chances
and coincidences of common life, as an artist leads
the spectator’s eye through the subject of his
picture by a skilful repetition of colour. This
is why it is impossible to quote from his book with
any justice to it. The whole growth of the narrative
is so matted and interwoven together with tendril-like
links and bindings, that there is no detaching a flower
with sufficient length of stalk to exhibit it to advantage.
There is that mutual dependence in his characters
which is the first requisite in painting every-day
life: no one is stuck on a separate pedestal—­no
one is sitting for his portrait. There may be
one exception—­we mean Sir Pitt Crawley,
senior; it is possible, nay, we hardly doubt, that
this baronet was closer drawn from individual life
than anybody else in the book; but granting that fact,
the animal was so unique an exception, that we wonder
so shrewd an artist could stick him into a gallery
so full of our familiars. The scenes in Germany,
we can believe, will seem to many readers of an English
book hardly less extravagantly absurd—­grossly
and gratuitously overdrawn; but the initiated will
value them as containing some of the keenest strokes
of truth and humour that “Vanity Fair”
exhibits, and not enjoy them the less for being at
our neighbour’s expense. For the thorough

Page 276

appreciation of the chief character they are quite
indispensable too. The whole course of the work
may be viewed as the Wander-Jahre of a far
cleverer female, Wilhelm Meister. We have
watched her in the ups-and-downs of life—­among
the humble, the fashionable, the great, and the pious—­and
found her ever new, yet ever the same; but still Becky
among the students was requisite to complete the full
measure of our admiration.

“Jane Eyre,” as a work, and one of equal
popularity, is, in almost every respect, a total contrast
to “Vanity Fair.” The characters and
events, though some of them masterly in conception,
are coined expressly for the purpose of bringing out
great effects. The hero and heroine are beings
both so singularly unattractive that the reader feels
they can have no vocation in the novel but to be brought
together; and they do things which, though not impossible,
lie utterly beyond the bounds of probability.
On this account a short sketch of the plan seems requisite;
not but what it is a plan familiar enough to all readers
of novels—­ especially those of the old
school and those of the lowest school of our own day.
For Jane Eyre is merely another Pamela, who, by the
force of her character and the strength of her principles,
is carried victoriously through great trials and temptations
from the man she loves. Nor is she even a Pamela
adapted and refined to modern notions; for though
the story is conducted without those derelictions of
decorum which we are to believe had their excuse in
the manners of Richardson’s time, yet it stamped
with a coarseness of language and laxity of tone which
have certainly no excuse in ours. It is a very
remarkable book: we have no remembrance of another
combining such genuine power with such horrid taste.
Both together have equally assisted to gain the great
popularity it has enjoyed; for in these days of extravagant
adoration of all that bears the stamp of novelty and
originality, sheer rudeness and vulgarity have come
in for a most mistaken worship.

The story is written in the first person. Jane
begins with her earliest recollections, and at once
takes possession of the readers’ intensest interest
by the masterly picture of a strange and oppressed
child she raises up in a few strokes before him.
She is an orphan, and a dependant in the house of
a selfish, hard-hearted aunt, against whom the disposition
of the little Jane chafes itself in natural antipathy,
till she contrives to make the unequal struggle as
intolerable to her oppressor as it is to herself.
She is, therefore, at eight years of age, got rid
of to a sort of Dothegirls Hall, where she continues
to enlist our sympathies for a time with her little
pinched fingers, cropped hair, and empty stomach.
But things improve: the abuses of the institution
are looked into. The Puritan patron, who holds
that young orphan girls are only safely brought up
upon the rules of La Trappe, is superseded by an enlightened

Page 277

committee—­the school assumes a sound English
character—­ Jane progresses duly from scholar
to teacher, and passes ten profitable and not unhappy
years at Lowood. Then she advertises for a situation
as governess, and obtains one immediately in one of
the midland counties. We see her, therefore,
as she leaves Lowood, to enter upon a new life—­a
small, plain, odd creature, who has been brought up
dry upon school learning, and somewhat stunted accordingly
in mind and body, and who is now thrown upon the world
as ignorant of its ways, and as destitute of its friendships,
as a shipwrecked mariner upon a strange coast.

Thornfield Hall is the property of Mr. Rochester—­a
bachelor addicted to travelling. She finds it
at first in all the peaceful prestige of an English
gentleman’s seat when “nobody is at the
hall.” The companions are an old decayed
gentlewoman housekeeper—­a far away cousin
of the squire’s—­and a young French
child, Jane’s pupil, Mr. Rochester’s ward
and reputed daughter. There is a pleasing monotony
in the summer solitude of the old country house, with
its comfort, respectability, and dulness, which Jane
paints to the life; but there is one circumstance
which varies the sameness and casts a mysterious feeling
over the scene. A strange laugh is heard from
time to time in a distant part of the house—­a
laugh which grates discordantly upon Jane’s ear.
She listens, watches, and inquires, but can discover
nothing but a plain matter of fact woman, who sits
sewing somewhere in the attics, and goes up and down
stairs peaceably to and from her dinner with the servants.
But a mystery there is, though nothing betrays it,
and it comes in with marvellous effect from the monotonous
reality of all around. After awhile Mr. Rochester
comes to Thornfield, and sends for the child and her
governess occasionally to bear him company. He
is a dark, strange-looking man—­strong and
large—­of the brigand stamp, with fine eyes
and lowering brows—­blunt and sarcastic in
his manners, with a kind of misanthropical frankness,
which seems based upon utter contempt for his fellow-creatures
and a surly truthfulness which is more rudeness than
honesty. With his arrival disappears all the prestige
of country innocence that had invested Thornfield
Hall. He brings the taint of the world upon him,
and none of its illusions. The queer little governess
is something new to him. He talks to her at one
time imperiously as to a servant, and at another recklessly
as to a man. He pours into her ears disgraceful
tales of his past life, connected with the birth of
little Adele, which any man with common respect for
a woman, and that a mere girl of eighteen, would have
spared her; but which eighteen in this case listens
to as if it were nothing new, and certainly nothing
distasteful. He is captious and Turk-like—­she
is one day his confidant, and another his unnoticed
dependant. In short, by her account, Mr. Rochester
is a strange brute, somewhat in the Squire Western

Page 278

style of absolute and capricious eccentricity, though
redeemed in him by signs of a cultivated intellect,
and gleams of a certain fierce justice of heart.
He has a mind, and when he opens it at all,
he opens it freely to her. Jane becomes attached
to her “master,” as Pamela-like she calls
him, and it is not difficult to see that solitude
and propinquity are taking effect upon him also.
An odd circumstance heightens the dawning romance.
Jane is awoke one night by that strange discordant
laugh close to her ear—­ then a noise as
if hands feeling along the wall. She rises—­opens
her door, finds the passage full of smoke, is guided
by it to her master’s room, whose bed she discovers
enveloped in flames, and by her timely aid saves his
life. After this they meet no more for ten days,
when Mr. Rochester returns from a visit to a neighbouring
family, bringing with him a housefull of distinguished
guests; at the head of whom is Miss Blanche Ingram,
a haughty beauty of high birth, and evidently the
especial object of the Squire’s attentions—­upon
which tumultuous irruption Miss Eyre slips back into
her naturally humble position.

Our little governess is now summoned away to attend
her aunt’s death-bed, who is visited by some
compunctions towards her, and she is absent a month.
When she returns Thornfield Hall is quit of all its
guests, and Mr. Rochester and she resume their former
life of captious cordiality on the one side, and diplomatic
humility on the other. At the same time the bugbear
of Miss Ingram and of Mr. Rochester’s engagement
with her is kept up, though it is easy to see that
this and all concerning that lady is only a stratagem
to try Jane’s character and affection upon the
most approved Griselda precedent. Accordingly
an opportunity for explanation ere long offers itself,
where Mr. Rochester has only to take it. Miss
Eyre is desired to walk with him in shady alleys, and
to sit with him on the roots of an old chestnut-tree
towards the close of evening, and of course she cannot
disobey her “master”—­whereupon
there ensues a scene which, as far as we remember,
is new equally in art or nature; in which Miss Eyre
confesses her love—­whereupon Mr. Rochester
drops not only his cigar (which she seems to be in
the habit of lighting for him) but his mask, and finally
offers not only heart, but hand. The wedding day
is soon fixed, but strange misgivings and presentiments
haunt the young lady’s mind. The night
but one before her bed-room is entered by a horrid
phantom, who tries on the wedding veil, sends Jane
into a swoon of terror, and defeats all the favourite
refuge of a bad dream by leaving the veil in two pieces.
But all is ready. The bride has no friends to
assist—­the couple walk to church—­only
the clergyman and the clerk are there—­but
Jane’s quick eye has seen two figures lingering
among the tombstones, and these two follow them into
church. The ceremony commences, when at the due
charge which summons any man to come forward and show

Page 279

just cause why they should not be joined together,
a voice interposes to forbid the marriage. There
is an impediment, and a serious one. The bridegroom
has a wife not only living, but living under the very
roof of Thornfield Hall. Hers was that discordant
laugh which had so often caught Jane’s ear;
she it was who in her malice had tried to burn Mr.
Rochester in his bed—­who had visited Jane
by night and torn her veil, and whose attendant was
that same pretended sew-woman who had so strongly
excited Jane’s curiosity. For Mr. Rochester’s
wife is a creature, half fiend, half maniac, whom
he had married in a distant part of the world, and
whom now, in self-constituted code of morality, he
had thought it his right, and even his duty, to supersede
by a more agreeable companion. Now follow scenes
of a truly tragic power. This is the grand crisis
in Jane’s life. Her whole soul is wrapt
up in Mr. Rochester. He has broken her trust,
but not diminished her love. He entreats her
to accept all that he still can give, his heart and
his home; he pleads with the agony not only of a man
who has never known what it was to conquer a passion,
but of one who, by that same self-constituted code,
now burns to atone for a disappointed crime. There
is no one to help her against him or against herself.
Jane had no friends to stand by her at the altar,
and she has none to support her now she is plucked
away from it. There is no one to be offended or
disgraced at her following him to the sunny land of
Italy, as he proposes, till the maniac should die.
There is no duty to any one but to herself, and this
feeble reed quivers and trembles beneath the overwhelming
weight of love and sophistry opposed to it. But
Jane triumphs; in the middle of the night she rises—­glides
out of her room—­takes off her shoes as she
passes Mr. Rochester’s chamber;—­leaves
the house, and casts herself upon a world more desert
than ever to her—­

Without a shilling and without a friend.

Thus the great deed of self-conquest is accomplished;
Jane has passed through the fire of temptation from
without and from within; her character is stamped
from that day; we need therefore follow her no further
into wanderings and sufferings which, though not unmixed
with plunder from Minerva-lane, occupy some of, on
the whole, the most striking chapters in the book.
Virtue of course finds her reward. The maniac
wife sets fire to Thornfield Hall, and perishes herself
in the flames. Mr. Rochester, in endeavouring
to save her, loses the sight of his eyes. Jane
rejoins her blind master; they are married, after which
of course the happy man recovers his sight.

Page 280

Such is the outline of a tale in which, combined with
great materials for power and feeling, the reader
may trace gross inconsistencies and improbabilities,
and chief and foremost that highest moral offence a
novel writer can commit, that of making an unworthy
character interesting in the eyes of the reader.
Mr. Rochester is a man who deliberately and secretly
seeks to violate the laws both of God and man, and
yet we will be bound half our lady readers are enchanted
with him for a model of generosity and honour.
We would have thought that such a hero had had no
chance, in the purer taste of the present day; but
the popularity of Jane Eyre is a proof how deeply
the love for illegitimate romance is implanted in
our nature. Not that the author is strictly responsible
for this. Mr. Rochester’s character is tolerably
consistent. He is made as coarse and as brutal
as can in all conscience be required to keep our sympathies
at a distance. In point of literary consistency
the hero is at all events impugnable, though we cannot
say as much for the heroine.

As to Jane’s character—­there is none
of that harmonious unity about it which made little
Becky so grateful a subject of analysis—­nor
are the discrepancies of that kind which have their
excuse and their response in our nature. The
inconsistencies of Jane’s character lie mainly
not in her own imperfections, though of course she
has her share, but in the author’s. There
is that confusion in the relations between cause and
effect, which is not so much untrue to human nature
as to human art. The error in Jane Eyre is, not
that her character is this or that, but that she is
made one thing in the eyes of her imaginary companions,
and another in that of the actual reader. There
is a perpetual disparity between the account she herself
gives of the effect she produces, and the means shown
us by which she brings that effect about. We hear
nothing but self-eulogiums on the perfect tact and
wondrous penetration with which she is gifted, and
yet almost every word she utters offends us, not only
with the absence of these qualities, but with the positive
contrasts of them, in either her pedantry, stupidity,
or gross vulgarity. She is one of those ladies
who puts us in the unpleasant predicament of undervaluing
their very virtues for dislike of the person in whom
they are represented. One feels provoked as Jane
Eyre stands before us—­for in the wonderful
reality of her thoughts and descriptions, she seems
accountable for all done in her name—­with
principles you must approve in the main, and yet with
language and manners that offend you in every particular.
Even in that chef-d’oeuvre of brilliant
retrospective sketching, the description of her early
life, it is the childhood and not the child that interests
you. The little Jane, with her sharp eyes and
dogmatic speeches, is a being you neither could fondle
nor love. There is a hardness in her infantine
earnestness, and a spiteful precocity in her reasoning,

Page 281

which repulses all our sympathy. One sees that
she is of a nature to dwell upon and treasure up every
slight and unkindness, real or fancied, and such natures
we know are surer than any others to meet with plenty
of this sort of thing. As the child, so also
the woman—­an uninteresting, sententious,
pedantic thing; with no experience of the world, and
yet with no simplicity or freshness in its stead.
What are her first answers to Mr. Rochester but such
as would have quenched all interest, even for a prettier
woman, in any man of common knowledge of what was nature—­and
especially in a blase monster like him?

* * * *
*

But the crowning scene is the offer—­governesses
are said to be sly on such occasions, but Jane out-governesses
them all—­little Becky would have blushed
for her. They are sitting together at the foot
of the old chestnut tree, as we have already mentioned,
towards the close of evening, and Mr. Rochester is
informing her, with his usual delicacy of language,
that he is engaged to Miss Ingram—­“a
strapper! Jane, a real strapper!”—­and
that as soon as he brings home his bride to Thornfield,
she, the governess, must “trot forthwith”—­but
that he shall make it his duty to look out for employment
and an asylum for her—­indeed, that he has
already heard of a charming situation in the depths
of Ireland—­all with a brutal jocoseness
which most women of spirit, unless grievously despairing
of any other lover, would have resented, and any woman
of sense would have seen through. But Jane, that
profound reader of the human heart, and especially
of Mr. Rochester’s, does neither. She meekly
hopes she may be allowed to stay where she is till
she has found another shelter to betake herself to—­she
does not fancy going to Ireland—­Why?

“It is a long way off, Sir.”
“No matter—­a girl of your sense will
not
object to the voyage or the distance.”
“Not the voyage, but the
distance, Sir; and then the sea is a barrier—­”
“From what, Jane?”
“From England, and from Thornfield;
and—­” “Well?” “From
you, Sir.”
—­vol. ii, p. 205.

and then the lady bursts into tears in the most approved
fashion.

Although so clever in giving hints, how wonderfully
slow she is in taking them! Even when, tired
of his cat’s play, Mr. Rochester proceeds to
rather indubitable demonstrations of affection—­“enclosing
me in his arms, gathering me to his breast, pressing
his lips on my lips”—­Jane has no
idea what he can mean. Some ladies would have
thought it high time to leave the Squire alone with
his chestnut tree; or, at all events, unnecessary
to keep up that tone of high-souled feminine obtusity
which they are quite justified in adopting if gentlemen
will not speak out—­but Jane again does
neither. Not that we say she was wrong, but quite
the reverse, considering the circumstances of the case—­
Mr. Rochester was her master, and “Duchess or
nothing” was her first duty—­only
she was not quite so artless as the author would have
us suppose.

Page 282

But if the manner in which she secures the prize be
not inadmissible according to the rules of the art,
that in which she manages it when caught, is quite
without authority or precedent, except perhaps in the
servants’ hall. Most lover’s play
is wearisome and nonsensical to the lookers on—­but
the part Jane assumes is one which could only be efficiently
sustained by the substitution of Sam for her master.
Coarse as Mr. Rochester is, one winces for him under
the infliction of this housemaid beau ideal
of the arts of coquetry. A little more, and we
should have flung the book aside to lie for ever among
the trumpery with which such scenes ally it; but it
were a pity to have halted here, for wonderful things
lie beyond—­scenes of suppressed feeling,
more fearful to witness than the most violent tornados
of passion—­struggles with such intense
sorrow and suffering as it is sufficient misery to
know that any one should have conceived, far less
passed through; and yet with that stamp of truth which
takes precedence in the human heart before actual
experience. The flippant, fifth-rate, plebeian
actress has vanished, and only a noble, high-souled
woman, bound to us by the reality of her sorrow, and
yet raised above us by the strength of her will, stands
in actual life before us. If this be Jane Eyre,
the author has done her injustice hitherto, not we.

* * * *
*

We have said that this was the picture of a natural
heart. This, to our view, is the great and crying
mischief of the book. Jane Eyre is throughout
the personification of an unregenerate and undisciplined
spirit, and more dangerous to exhibit from that prestige
of principle and self-control which is liable to dazzle
the eye too much for it to observe the inefficient
and unsound foundation on which it rests. It is
true Jane does right, and exerts great moral strength,
but it is the strength of a mere heathen mind which
is a law unto itself. No Christian grace is perceptible
upon her. She has inherited in fullest measure
the worst sin of our fallen nature—­the
sin of pride. Jane Eyre is proud, and therefore
she is ungrateful too. It pleased God to make
her an orphan, friendless, and penniless—­yet
she thanks nobody, and least of all Him, for the food
and raiment, the friends, companions, and instructors
of her helpless youth—­for the care and education
vouchsafed to her till she was capable in mind as
fitted in years to provide for herself. On the
contrary, she looks upon all that has been done for
her not only as her undoubted right, but as falling
far short of it. The doctrine of humility is
not more foreign to her mind than it is repudiated
by her heart. It is by her own talents, virtues,
and courage that she is made to attain the summit
of human happiness, and, as far as Jane Eyre’s
own statement is concerned, no one would think that
she owed anything either to God above or to man below.
She flees from Mr. Rochester, and has not a being

Page 283

to turn to. Why was this? The excellence
of the present institution at Casterton, which succeeded
that of Cowan Bridge near Kirkby Lonsdale—­these
being distinctly, as we hear, the original and the
reformed Lowoods of the book—­is pretty generally
known. Jane had lived there for eight years with
110 girls and fifteen teachers. Why had she formed
no friendships among them? Other orphans have
left the same and similar institutions, furnished with
friends for life, and puzzled with homes to choose
from. How comes it that Jane had acquired neither?
Among that number of associates there were surely some
exceptions to what she so presumptuously stigmatises
as “the society of inferior minds.”
Of course it suited the author’s end to represent
the heroine as utterly destitute of the common means
of assistance, in order to exhibit both her trials
and her powers of self-support—­the whole
book rests on this assumption—­but it is
one which, under the circumstances, is very unnatural
and very unjust.

Altogether the auto-biography of Jane Eyre is pre-eminently
an anti-Christian composition. There is throughout
it a murmuring against the comforts of the rich and
against the privations of the poor, which, as far
as each individual is concerned, is a murmuring against
God’s appointment—­there is a proud
and perpetual assertion of the rights of man, for
which we find no authority either in God’s word
or in God’s providence—­there is that
pervading tone of ungodly discontent which is at once
the most prominent and the most subtle evil which the
law and the pulpit, which all civilized society in
fact has at the present day to contend with.
We do not hesitate to say that the tone of mind and
thought which has overthrown authority and violated
every code human and divine abroad, and fostered Chartism
and rebellion at home, is the same which has also
written Jane Eyre.

Still we say again this is a very remarkable book.
We are painfully alive to the moral, religious, and
literary deficiencies of the picture, and such passages
of beauty and power as we have quoted cannot redeem
it, but it is impossible not to be spell-bound with
the freedom of the touch. It would be mere hackneyed
courtesy to call it “fine writing.”
It bears no impress of being written at all, but is
poured out rather in the heat and hurry of an instinct,
which flows ungovernably on to its object, indifferent
by what means it reaches it, and unconscious too.
As regards the author’s chief object, however,
it is a failure—­that, namely, of making
a plain, odd woman, destitute of all the conventional
features of feminine attraction, interesting in our
sight. We deny that he has succeeded in this.
Jane Eyre, in spite of some grand things about her,
is a being totally uncongenial to our feelings from
beginning to end. We acknowledge her firmness—­we
respect her determination—­we feel for her
struggles; but, for all that, and setting aside higher
considerations, the impression she leaves on our mind
is that of a decidedly vulgar-minded woman—­one
whom we should not care for as an acquaintance, whom
we should not seek as a friend, whom we should not
desire for a relation, and whom we should scrupulously
avoid for a governess.

Page 284

There seems to have arisen in the novel-reading world
some doubts as to who really wrote this book; and
various rumours, more or less romantic, have been
current in Mayfair, the metropolis of gossip, as to
the authorship. For example, Jane Eyre is sentimentally
assumed to have proceeded from the pen of Mr. Thackeray’s
governess, whom he had himself chosen as his model
of Becky, and who, in mingled love and revenge, personified
him in return as Mr. Rochester. In this case,
it is evident that the author of “Vanity Fair,”
whose own pencil makes him grey-haired, has had the
best of it, though his children may have had the worst,
having, at all events, succeeded in hitting the vulnerable
point in the Becky bosom, which it is our firm belief
no man born of woman, from her Soho to her Ostend
days, had ever so much as grazed. To this ingenious
rumour the coincidence of the second edition of Jane
Eyre being dedicated to Mr. Thackeray has probably
given rise. For our parts, we see no great interest
in the question at all. The first edition of
Jane Eyre purports to be edited by Currer Bell, one
of a trio of brothers, or sisters, or cousins, by
names Currer, Acton, and Ellis Bell, already known
as the joint-authors of a volume of poems. The
second edition the same—­dedicated, however,
“by the author,” to Mr. Thackeray; and
the dedication (itself an indubitable chip of
Jane Eyre) signed Currer Bell. Author and editor
therefore are one, and we are as much satisfied to
accept this double individual under the name of “Currer
Bell,” as under any other, more or less euphonious.
Whoever it be, it is a person who, with great mental
powers, combines a total ignorance of the habits of
society, a great coarseness of taste, and a heathenish
doctrine of religion. And as these characteristics
appear more or less in the writings of all three,
Currer, Acton, and Ellis alike, for their poems differ
less in degree of power than in kind, we are ready
to accept the fact of their identity or of their relationship
with equal satisfaction. At all events there can
be no interest attached to the writer of “Wuthering
Heights “—­a novel succeeding “Jane
Eyre,” and purporting to be written by Ellis
Bell—­unless it were for the sake of more
individual reprobation. For though there is a
decided family likeness between the two, yet the aspect
of the Jane and Rochester animals in their native
state, as Catherine and Heathfield [Transcriber’s
note: sic], is too odiously and abominably pagan
to be palatable even to the most vitiated class of
English readers. With all the unscrupulousness
of the French school of novels it combines that repulsive
vulgarity in the choice of its vice which supplies
its own antidote. The question of authorship,
therefore, can deserve a moment’s curiosity
only as far as “Jane Eyre” is concerned,
and though we cannot pronounce that it appertains
to a real Mr. Currer Bell and to no other, yet that
it appertains to a man, and not, as many assert, to

Page 285

a woman, we are strongly inclined to affirm.
Without entering into the question whether the power
of the writing be above her, or the vulgarity below
her, there are, we believe, minutiae of circumstantial
evidence which at once acquit the feminine hand.
No woman—­a lady friend, whom we are always
happy to consult, assures us—­makes mistakes
in her own metier—­ no woman trusses
game and garnishes dessert-dishes with the same
hands, or talks of so doing in the same breath.
Above all, no woman attires another in such fancy
dresses as Jane’s ladies assume—­Miss
Ingram coming down, irresistible, “in a morning
robe of sky-blue crape, a gauze azure scarf twisted
in her hair!!” No lady, we understand, when
suddenly roused in the night, would think of hurrying
on “a frock.” They have garments
more convenient for such occasions, and more becoming
too. This evidence seems incontrovertible.
Even granting that these incongruities were purposely
assumed, for the sake of disguising the female pen,
there is nothing gained; for if we ascribe the book
to a woman at all, we have no alternative but to ascribe
it to one who has, for some sufficient reason, long
forfeited the society of her own sex.

ON GEORGE ELIOT

[From The Quarterly Review, October, 1860]

1. Scenes of Clerical Life [containing The
Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton; Mr. Gilfil’s
Love Story; and Janet’s Repentance].
By GEORGE ELIOT. Second Edition. 2 vols.
Edinburgh and London, 1859.

2. Adam Bede. By GEORGE ELIOT. Sixth
Edition, 2 vols. 1859.

3. The Mill on the Floss. By GEORGE ELIOT.
3 vols. 1860.

We frequently hear the remark, that in the present
day everything is tending to uniformity—­that
all minds are taught to think alike, that the days
of novelty have departed. To us, however, it appears
that the age abounds in new and abnormal modes of
thought—­we had almost said, forms of being.
What could be so new and so unlikely as that the young
and irreproachable maiden daughter of a clergyman should
have produced so extraordinary a work as “Jane
Eyre,”—­a work of which we were compelled
to express the opinion that the unknown and mysterious
“Currer Bell” held “a heathenish
doctrine of religion”; that the ignorance which
the book displayed as to the proprieties of female
dress was hardly compatible with the idea of its having
been written by a woman; but that, if a woman at all,
the writer must be “one who had, for some sufficient
reason, long forfeited the society of her own sex.”

Page 286

In attempting to guess at the character and circumstances
of the writer, a reviewer could only choose among
such types of men and women as he had known, or heard,
or read of. An early European settler in Australia,
in conjecturing whether his garden had been ravaged
by a bird or by a quadruped, would not light readily
on the conception of an ornithorhynchus; and assuredly
no one accustomed only to ordinary men and women could
have divined the character, the training, and the
position of Charlotte Bronte, as they have been made
known to us by her biographer’s unsparing revelations.
It was not to be expected that any one should have
imagined the life of Howorth [Trasncriber’s note:
sic] parsonage; the gifted, wayward, and unhappy sisterhood
in their cheerless home; the rudeness of the only
society which was within their reach; while their
views of anything beyond their own immediate circle,
and certain unpleasing forms of school-life which they
had known, were drawn from the representations of
a brother whose abilities they regarded with awe,
but who in other respects appears to have been an
utterly worthless debauchee; lying and slandering,
bragging not only of the sins which he had committed,
but of many which he had not committed; thoroughly
depraved himself, and tainting the thoughts of all
within his sphere. There was, therefore, in “Jane
Eyre,” as the reviewer supposed, the influence
of a corrupt male mind, although this influence had
been exerted through an unsuspected medium. We
now know how it was that a clergyman’s daughter,
herself innocent, and honourably devoted to the discharge
of many a painful duty, could have written such a book
as “Jane Eyre” but without such explanations
as Mrs. Gaskell has placed (perhaps somewhat too unreservedly)
before the world, the thing would have been inconceivable.
Indeed there is very sufficient evidence that the
Quarterly reviewer was by no means alone in entertaining
the opinions we have referred to: for the book
was most vehemently cried up—­ the society
of the authoress, when she became known, was most eagerly
courted—­assiduous attempts were made (greatly
to her annoyance) to enlist her, to exhibit her, to
trade on her fame—­by the very persons who
would have been most ready to welcome her if she had
been such as the reviewer supposed her to be.
And it is clear that the gentleman who introduced
himself to her acquaintance on the ground that each
of them had “written a naughty book” must
have drawn pretty much the same conclusions from the
tone of Miss Bronte’s first novel as the writer
in this Review.

In like manner a great and remarkable departure from
ordinary forms and conditions has caused extreme uncertainty
and many mistaken guesses as to the new novelist who
writes under the name of George Eliot. One critic
of considerable pretensions, for instance, declared
his belief that “George Eliot” was “a
gentleman of high-church tendencies”; next came
the strange mystification which ascribed the “Eliot”
tales to one Mr. Joseph Liggins; and finally, the
public learnt on authority that the “gentleman
of high church tendencies” was a lady; and that
this lady was the same who had given a remarkable
proof of mastery over both the German language and
her own, but had certainly not established a reputation
for orthodoxy, by a translation of Strauss’s
“Life of Jesus.”

Page 287

It is now too late to claim credit for having discovered
the female authorship before this disclosure of the
fact. But it seems to us impossible, when once
the idea has been suggested, to read through these
books without finding confirmation of it in almost
every page. There is, indeed, power such as is
rarely given to woman (or to man either); there are
traces of knowledge which is not usual among women
(although some of the classical quotations might at
least have been more correctly printed); there is
a good deal of coarseness, which it is unpleasant to
think of as the work of a woman; and, as we shall have
occasion to observe more fully hereafter, the influence
which these novels are likely to exercise over the
public taste is not altogether such as a woman should
aim at. But, with all this, the tone and atmosphere
of the books are unquestionably feminine. The
men are a woman’s men—­the women are
a woman’s women; the points on which the descriptions
dwell in persons of each sex are those which a woman
would choose. In matters of dress we are assured
that “George Eliot” avoids the errors of
“Jane Eyre”; for no doubt she has had
better opportunities of study than those which were
afforded by the Sunday finery of Howorth church.
The sketches of nature, of character, of life and
manners, show female observation; penetrating where
it alone could penetrate, and usually stopping at the
boundaries beyond which it does not advance....

On looking at these very slight sketches we cannot
but be struck by the uniformly melancholy ending of
the tales. The first culminates in the death
of the heroine (a word which in relation to these stories
must be very loosely interpreted), Mrs. Barton; the
second, in the death of the heroine, Mrs. Gilfil;
the third, in the death of the hero, Mr. Tryan; the
fourth, in the death of one of the heroines, Hetty
Sorrel; the fifth, in the simultaneous death of the
heroine and her brother, who is, we suppose, to be
regarded as the chief hero. Surely this is an
exaggerated representation of the proportion which
sorrow bears to happiness in human life; and the fact
that a popular writer has (whether consciously or
not) brought every one of the five stories which she
has published to a tragical end gives a very uncomfortable
idea of the tone of our present literature. And
other such symptoms are only too plentiful—­the
announcement of a novel with the title of “Why
Paul Freeoll Killed his Wife” being one of the
latest. With all respect for the talents of the
lady who offers us the solution of this question, we
must honestly profess that we would rather not know,
and that we regret such an employment of her pen.

And in “George Eliot’s” writings
there is very much of this kind to regret. She
delights in unpleasant subjects—­in the representation
of things which are repulsive, coarse, and degrading.
Thus, in “Mr. Gilfil’s Story,” Tina
is only prevented from committing murder by the opportune
death of her intended victim. In “Janet’s
Repentance,” a drunken husband beats his beautiful
but drunken wife, turns her out of doors at midnight
in her night-dress, and dies of “delirium
tremens and meningitis.” ...

Page 288

So, in “Adam Bede” we have all the circumstances
of Hetty’s seduction and the birth and murder
of her illegitimate child; and in the “Mill on
the Floss” there are the almost indecent details
of mere animal passion in the loves of Stephen and
Maggie. If these are, as the writer’s more
thorough-going admirers would tell us, the depths of
human nature, we do not see what good can be expected
from raking them up,—­not for the benefit
of those whom the warnings may concern (for these are
not likely to heed any warnings which may be presented
in such a form), but for the amusement of ordinary
readers in hours of idleness and relaxation.
Compare “Adam Bede” with that one of Scott’s
novels which has something in common with it as to
story—­the “Heart of Midlothian.”
In each a beautiful young woman of the peasant class
is tried and condemned for child-murder; but, although
condemned on circumstancial evidence under a law of
peculiar severity, Effie Deans is really innocent,
whereas Hetty Sorrel is guilty. In the novel
of the last generation we see little of Effie, and
our attention is chiefly drawn to the simple heroism
of her sister Jeanie. In the novel of the present
day, everything about Hetty is most elaborately described:
her thoughts throughout the whole course of the seduction,
her misery on discovering that there is evidence of
her frailty, her sufferings on the journey to Windsor
and back (for it is the Edie and not the Jeanie of
this tale that makes a long solitary journey to the
south), her despairing hardness in the prison, her
confession, her behaviour on the way to the gallows.
That all this is represented with extraordinary force
we need not say; and doubtless the partisans of “George
Eliot” would tell us that Scott could not have
written the chapters in question. We do not think
it necessary to discuss that point, but we are sure
that in any case he would not have written
them, because his healthy judgment would have rejected
such matters as unfit for the novelist’s art.

The boldness with which George Eliot chooses her subjects
is very remarkable. It is not that, like other
writers, she fails in the attempt to represent people
as agreeable and interesting, but she knowingly forces
disagreeable people on us, and insists that
we shall be interested in their story by the skill
with which it is told. Mr. Amos Barton, for instance,
is as uninteresting a person as can well be imagined:
a dull, obtuse curate, whose poverty gives him no fair
claim to pity; for he has entered the ministry of
the English Church without any particular conviction
of its superiority to other religious bodies; without
any special fitness for its ministry; without anything
of the ability which might reasonably entitle him
to expect to rise; and without the private means which
are necessary for the support of most married men
in a profession which, if it is not (as it is sometimes
called) a lottery, has very great inequalities of income,

Page 289

and to the vast majority of those who follow it gives
very little indeed. Mr. Barton is not a gentleman—­a
defect which the farmers and tradespeople of his parish
are not slow to discover, and for which they despise
him. He is without any misgivings as to himself
or suspicion of his deficiencies in any way, and his
conduct is correctly described in a lisping speech
of the “secondary squire” of his parish,
“What an ath Barton makth of himthelf!”
Yet for this stupid man our sympathy is bespoken,
merely because he has a wife so much too good for him
that we are almost inclined to be angry with her for
her devotion to him.

Tina is an undisciplined, abnormal little creature,
without good looks or any attractive quality except
a talent for music, and with a temper capable of the
most furious excesses. Although Janet is described
as handsome, amiable, and cultivated, all these good
properties are overwhelmed in our thoughts of her
by the degrading vice of which she is to be cured;
while her prophet, Mr. Tryan, although very zealous
in his work, is avowedly a narrow Calvinist, wanting
in intellectual culture, very irritable, not a little
bitter and uncharitable, excessively fond of applause
without being very critical as to the quarter from
which it comes, and strongly possessed with the love
of domination. Tom Tulliver is hard, close, unimaginative,
self-confident, repelling, with a stern rectitude
of a certain kind, but with no understanding of or
toleration for any character different from his own.
Philip Wakem is a personage as little pleasant as
picturesque. Maggie, as a child—­although
in her father’s opinion “too clever for
a gell”—­is foolish, vain, self-willed,
and always in some silly scrape or other; and when
grown up, her behaviour is such, even before the climax
of the affair with Stephen Guest, that the dislike
of the St. Ogg’s ladies for her might have been
very sufficiently accounted for even if they had not
had reason to envy her superior beauty.

But of all the characters for whom our authoress has
been pleased to bespeak our interest, Hetty Sorrel
is the most remarkable for unamiable qualities.
She is represented as “distractingly pretty,”
and we hear a great deal about her “kitten-like
beauty,” and her graceful movements, looks,
and attitudes. But this is all that can be said
for her. Her mind has no room for anything but
looks and dress; she has no feeling for anybody but
her little self; and is only too truly declared by
Mrs. Poyser to be “no better than a peacock,
as ’ud strut about on the wall, and spread its
tail when the sun shone, if all the folks i’
the parish was dying”—­“no better
nor a cherry, wi’ a hard stone inside it."[1]
Over and over this view of Hetty’s character
is enforced on us, from the time when, early in the
first volume, we are told that hers “was a springtide
beauty; it was the beauty of young frisking things,
round-limbed, gambolling, circumventing you by a false
air of innocence.[2] ...”

Page 290

[1] “Adam Bede,” i. 228; ii. 75. [2]
ibid., i. 119.

Her conduct throughout is such as to offend and disgust;
and the authoress does not seem to be sufficiently
aware that, while the descriptions of the little coquette’s
beauty leave that to be imagined, her follies and
faults and crimes are set before us as matters of hard,
unmistakeable fact, so that the reader is in no danger
of being blinded by the charms which blinded Adam
Bede, and Hetty consequently appears as little else
than contemptible when she is not odious. Yet
it is on this silly, heartless, and wicked little
thing that the interest of the story is made to rest.
Her agonies, as we have already said, are depicted
with very great power; yet, if they touch our hearts,
it is merely because they are agonies, and
our feeling is unmixed with any regard for the sufferer
herself.

This habit of representing her characters without
any concealment of their faults is, no doubt, connected
with that faculty which enables the authoress to give
them so remarkable an air of reality. There are,
indeed, exceptions to this, as there are in almost
every work of fiction. Thus, Sir Christopher
and Lady Cheverel strike us as old acquaintances whom
we have known not in real life, but in books.
We are not altogether sure of stately old Mrs. Irwine,
and are sceptical as to Dinah Morris, notwithstanding
the very great pains which the authoress has evidently
bestowed on her—­perhaps because she is utterly
unlike such female Methodists as have fallen within
our own (happily, small) experience; and Bob Jakin
is a grotesque caricature, which would have been far
better done by Mr. Dickens, who is undeniably great
in the production of grotesques, although we do not
remember that throughout the whole of his voluminous
works he has ever succeeded in embodying a single
natural and lifelike character. But, with a very
few exceptions, “George Eliot’s”
personages have that appearance of reality in which
those of Mr. Dickens are so conspicuously wanting.
And while Mr. Dickens’s views of English life
and society are about as far from the truth as those
of the French dramatists and romancers, “George
Eliot” is able to represent the social circumstances
in which her action is laid with the strongest appearance
of verisimilitude. We may not ourselves have
known Shepperton, or Hayslope, or St. Ogg’s;
but we feel as much at home in them as if we had....

Tulliver may be cited as another well-imagined and
well-executed character, with his downright impetuous
honesty, his hatred of “raskills,” and
his disposition to see rascality everywhere; his resolution
to stand on his rights, his good-natured contempt for
his wife, his very justifiable dislike of her sisters,
his love for his children, and his determination that
they shall have a good education, cost what it may,—­the
benefits of education having been impressed on his
mind by his own inability to “wrap up things
in words as aren’t actionable,” and by

Page 291

the consequent perception that “it’s an
uncommon fine thing, that is, when we can let a man
know what you think of him without paying for it."[1]
His love of litigation is reconciled with his belief
that “the law is meant to take care o’
raskills,” and that “Old Harry made the
lawyers” by the principle that the cause which
has the “biggest raskill” for attorney
has the best chance of success; so that honesty need
not despair if it can only secure the professional
assistance of accomplished roguery. And when,
notwithstanding this, the law and Mr. Wakem have been
too much for him, great skill is shown in the description
of poor Tulliver’s latter days; his prostration
and partial recovery; the concentration of his feelings
on the desire to wipe out the dishonour of insolvency,
and to avenge himself on the hostile attorney.
Indeed, we confess that, notwithstanding his somewhat
unedifying end, Tulliver is the only person in “The
Mill on the Floss” for whom we can bring ourselves
to care much.

[1] “The Mill on the Floss,” i. 32.

The reality of which we have been speaking is connected
with a peculiar sort of consciousness in the authoress,
as if she had actually witnessed all that she describes,
and were resolved to describe it without any attempt
to refine beyond the naked truth. Thus, the most
serious characters make their most solemn and most
pathetic speeches in provincial dialect and ungrammatical
constructions, although it must be allowed that the
authoress has not ventured so far in this way as to
play with the use and abuse of the aspirate. And
her dialect appears to be very carefully studied,
although we may doubt whether the Staffordshire provincialisms
of “Clerical Life” and “Adam Bede”
are sufficiently varied when the scene is shifted
in the latest book to the Lincolnshire side of the
Humber. But where a greater variation than that
between one midland dialect and another is required,
“George Eliot’s” conscientiousness
is very curiously shown. There is in “Mr.
Gilfil’s Story” a gardener of the name
of Bates, who is described as a Yorkshireman, and
in “Adam Bede” there is another gardener,
Mr. Craig, whose name would naturally indicate a Scotchman.
Each of these horticulturists is introduced into the
dialogue, and of course the reader would expect the
one to talk Yorkshire and the other to talk some variety
of Scotch. But the authoress, apparently, did
not feel herself mistress of either Scotch or Yorkshire
to such a degree as would have warranted her in attempting
them, and therefore, before her characters are allowed
to open their mouths, she, in each case, is careful
to tell us that we must moderate our expectations:
“Mr. Bates’s lips were of a peculiar cut,
and I fancy this had something to do with the peculiarity
of his dialect, which, as we shall see, was individual
rather than provincial."[1]

[1] “Scenes of Clerical Life,” i. 191.

“I think it was Mr. Craig’s pedigree only
that had the advantage of being Scotch, and not his
‘bringing up’; for, except that he had
a stronger burr in his accent, his speech differed
little from that of the Loamshire people around him."[2]
In short, except that lucifer matches are twice introduced
as familiar things in days when the tinder-box was
the only resource in general use for obtaining a light,[3]
we have not observed anything in which the authoress
could be “caught out.”

Page 292

[2] “Adam Bede,” i. 302. [3] “Adam
Bede,” i. 219, 362.

But this conscientious fidelity has very serious drawbacks.
It seems as if the authoress felt herself under an
obligation to give everything literally as it took
place; to shut out nothing which is superfluous; to
suppress nothing which is unfit for a work of fiction
(for not only have we a report of Dinah Morris’s
sermons, but the very words of the prayer which she
put up for Hetty in the prison); to abridge nothing
which is tiresome. People and incidents are described
at length, although they have little or nothing to
do with the story. We may mention as instances
the detailed history and character which are given
of Tom Tulliver’s tutor, the Reverend Walter
Stelling, and the account of Mr. Poyser’s harvest-home,
which, however good in itself, is utterly out of place
between the crisis and the conclusion of the story.
But most especially we complain of the fondness which
the authoress shows for exhibiting uninteresting and
tiresome people in all their interminable tediousness;
and if the morbid tone which we have already mentioned
reminds us of a French school of novelists, her passion
for photographing the minutest details of dullness
reminds us painfully of those American ladies who
contribute so largely to the literature of our railway-stalls,
by flooding their boundless prairies of dingy paper
with inexhaustible masses of blotchy type. We
quite admit the naturalness of the tradespeople and
other small folks whom this writer has perhaps explored
more deeply than any earlier novelist; but surely we
have far too much of them. It has indeed been
said that we are spoiled by the activity of the present
day for enjoying the faithful picture of what life
was in country parishes and in little country towns
fifty years ago; but we really cannot admit the justice
of this attempt to throw the blame on ourselves.
Dullness, we may be sure, has not died out within the
last half century, but is yet to be found in plenty;
and, if times were dull fifty or a hundred years ago,
the novelists of those days—­Scott and Fielding,
and Smollett, and even Goldsmith in his simple tale—­did
not make their readers groan under their dullness....

But are we likely to feel more kindly towards
such people as those of whom we are now complaining,
because all their triviality, and smallness, and tediousness
are displayed at wearisome length on paper? If
some Dutch painters bestowed their skill on homely
old women and boozy boors, there is no evidence that
they were capable of better things, and their choice
of subjects is no justification for one who certainly
can do better. Nor do we complain that we have
an old woman or a coarse merrymaking occasionally,
but that such things in their monotonous meanness
fill whole rooms of “George Eliot’s”
gallery; and, in truth, the real parallel to her is
not to be found in the old Dutchmen who honestly painted
what was before their eyes, but rather in the perverseness

Page 293

of our modern “pre-Raphaelites.” It
is of these gentlemen—­who, by the way,
in their reactionary affectations are the most entire
opposites of the simple, unaffected, and forward-striving
artists who really lived before Raphael—­it
is of these gentlemen, with their choice of disagreeable
subjects, uncomely models, and uncouth attitudes,
their bestowal of superfluous labour on trifling details,
and the consequent obtrusiveness of subordinate things
so as to mar the general effect of the work, that
“George Eliot” too often reminds us.

How very wearisome is the conversation of the clique
of inferior women who worship Mr. Tryan! how dismally
twaddling is that respectable old congregationalist,
Mr. Jerome, with his tidy little garden and his “littel
chacenut hoss”! We feel for Mr. Tryan when
in the society of such people, although to him it
was mitigated by the belief that he was doing good
by associating with them, and that by love of incense
from any quarter which is described as part of his
character. But why should it be inflicted in
such fearful doses on us, who have done nothing to
deserve it, who have no “mission” to encounter
it, and are entirely without Mr. Tryan’s consolations
under the endurance of it?

Adam Bede’s mother is another sore trial of
the reader’s patience—­with her endless
fretful chatter, and all the details of her urging
her sons, one after the other, to refresh themselves
with cold potatoes: nay, we are not reconciled
to these vegetables even by the fact that on one occasion
they are recommended as “taters wi’ the
gravy in ’em."[1] But it is in “The Mill
on the Floss” that the plague of tedious conversation
reaches its height. Mrs. Tulliver is one of four
married sisters, whose maiden name had been Dodson,
and in these sisters there is a studious combination
of family likeness with individual varieties of character.
Mrs. Tulliver herself—­whose “blond”
complexion is generally associated by our authoress
with imbecility of mind and character—­belongs
to that class of minds of which Mrs. Quickly may be
considered as the chief intellectual type. Mrs.
Pullet—­the wife of a gentleman farmer, whose
great characteristic is a habit of sucking lozenges,
and whom Tom Tulliver most justly sets down as a “nincompoop”—­is
almost sillier than Mrs. Tulliver. She has the
gift of tears ever ready to flow, and sheds them profusely
on the anticipation of imaginary and ridiculous woes.
Her favourite vanity consists in drawing dismal pictures
of the future and in priding herself on the bodily
sufferings of her neighbours; that one had “been
tapped no end o’ times, and the water—­they
say you might ha’ swum in it if you’d
liked”; that another’s “breath was
short to that degree as you could hear him two rooms
off”; and her highest religion—­ the
loftiest exercise of her faith and self-denial—­is
the accumulation of superfluous clothes and linen,
in the hope that they may make a creditable display
after her death. Mrs. Deane is “a thin-lipped

Page 294

woman, who made small well-considered speeches on
peculiar occasions, repeating them afterwards to her
husband, and asking him if she had not spoken very
properly”; and of her we see but little.
But of the eldest of the four, Mrs. Glegg, we see
so much that we are really made quite uncomfortable
by her; for she is a very formidable person indeed,—­
utterly without kindness, bullying everybody within
her reach (her husband included), holding herself
up as a model to everybody, and shaming all other
families—­especially those into which she
and her sisters had married—­by odious comparisons
with the Dodsons. All this we grant is very cleverly
done. The grim Mrs. Glegg and the fatuous Mrs.
Tulliver and Mrs. Pullet talk admirably in their respective
kinds; and we can quite believe that there are people
who are not unfairly represented by the Dodsons—­with,
the narrow limitation of their thoughts to their own
little circle—­the extravagantly high opinion
of their own vulgar family, with the corresponding
depreciation of all in and about their own rank who
do not belong to it—­their perfect conviction
that their own family traditions (such as the copious
eating of salt in their broth) are the standard of
all that is good—­their consecration of
all their most elevated feelings to the worship of
furniture, and clothes, and table-linen, and silver
spoons—­their utter alienation from all
that, in the opinion of educated people, can make
life fit to be enjoyed. The humour of Mrs. Glegg’s
determination that no ill desert of a relation shall
interfere with the disposal of her property by will
on the most rigidly Dodsonian principles of justice,
according to the several degrees of Dodsonship, is
excellent; and so is the change in her behaviour towards
Maggie, whom, after having always bullied her, she
takes up for the sake of Dodsondom’s credit when
everybody else has turned against her....

[1] “Adam Bede,” i. 54.

The writer does not seem to be aware that the fools
and bores of a book, while they bore the other characters,
ought not to bore but to amuse the reader, and that
they will become seriously wearisome to him if there
be too much of them. Shakespeare has contented
himself with showing us his Dogberry and Verges, his
Shallow and Slender, and Silence, to such a degree
as may sufficiently display their humours; but he has
not filled whole acts with them, and, even if he had,
a five-act play is a small field for the display of
prolix foolishness as compared with a three-volume
novel. Lord Macaulay has been supposed to speak
sarcastically in saying that he “would not advise
any person who reads for amusement to venture on a
certain jeu d’esprit of Mr. Sadler’s
as long as he can procure a volume of the Statutes
at Large";[1] but we are afraid that we should not
be believed if we were to mention the books to which
we have had recourse by way of occasional relief
from the task of perusing “George Eliot’s”
tales.

Page 295

[1] “Miscellaneous Writings,” ii. 68.

In the case of “these emmet-like Dodsons and
Tullivers,” the authoress again defends her
principle. “I share with you,” she
says, “the sense of oppressive narrowness; but
it is necessary that we should feel it, if we care
to understand how it acted on the lives of Tom and
Maggie."[2] We must confess that we care very little
for Tom and Maggie, who, although the inscription
on their tombstone and the motto on the title-page
of the book tell us that “in their death they
were not divided,” do not strike us as having
been “lovely and pleasant in their lives.”
We do not think the development of the brother and
the sister a matter of any great interest; and, if
it were, we believe that a sufficient ground might
have been laid for our understanding it without so
severely trying our patience by the details of the
“sordid life” amid which their early years
were spent.

[2] “The Mill on the Floss,” ii. 150.

Another mistake, as it appears to us, is the too didactic
strain into which the authoress occasionally falls—­writing
as if for the purpose of forcing lessons on children
or the poor, rather than for grown-up and educated
readers. The story of “Janet’s Repentance”
might, with the omission of a few passages such as
the satirical flings at Mr. Tryan’s female worshippers,
be made into a very edifying little tract for some
“evangelical” society. Mr. Tryan’s
opponents are all represented as brutes and monsters,
drunkards and unclean, enemies of all goodness; while,
with the usual unscrupulousness of party tract-writers,
we are required to choose between an alliance with
such infamous company and unreserved adhesion to the
Calvanistic curate, without being allowed any possibility
of a third course. And, in addition to Mr. Tryan’s
victory, there is the conversion of Mrs. Dempster,
not only from drunkenness to teetotalism (which might
form the text for a set of illustrations by Mr. Cruikshank,
in the moral style of his later days), but from hatred
to love of the Gospel according to Mr. Tryan.
In its place we should not care to object to such
a story, or to a great deal of the needless talk which
it contains both of sinners and of saints; but we do
object to it in a book which is intended for the lighter
reading of educated people, and the more so because
we know that it comes from a writer who can feel nothing
of the bitter but conscientious bigotry which the
composition of such a story in good faith implies....

In reading of Maggie’s early indiscretions,
we—­hardened, grey-headed reviewers as we
are—­feel something like a renewal of the
shame and mortification with which, long decades of
years ago, we read of the weaknesses of Frank and
Rosamond,—­as if we ourselves were the little
girl who made the mistake of choosing the big, bright-coloured
bottle from the chemist’s window, or the little
boy who allowed himself to be deceived by the flattery
of the lady in the draper’s shop. In order

Page 296

that her hair may have no chance of appearing in curls
on a great occasion (according to her mother’s
wish), Maggie plunges her head into a basin of water.
On getting an old dress and a bonnet from her unloved
aunt Glegg, she bastes the frock along with the roast
beef on the following Sunday, and souses the bonnet
under the pump. In consequence of the continual
remarks of her mother and aunts, about the un-Dodsonlike
colour of her hair, she cuts it all off. She makes
the most deplorable exhibition of her literary vanity
at every turn. Out of spite she pushes her cousin
Lucy, when arrayed in the prettiest of dresses, into
the “cow-trodden mud,” and thereupon she
runs off to a gang of gipsies, with the intention
of becoming their queen,—­an adventure from
which we are glad that she is allowed to escape with
less of suffering than Miss Edgeworth might perhaps
have felt it a matter of duty to inflict on her.
For the Toms and Maggies, the Franks and Rosamonds,
of real life, such monitory anecdotes as these may
be very good and useful; but it seems to us that they
are out of place in a book intended for readers who
have got beyond the early domestic schoolroom.

We cannot praise the construction of these tales.
The plots are very slight; the narrative drags painfully
in some parts, and in other parts the authoress has
recourse to very violent expedients, as where she
brings in the “startling Adelphi stage-effect”
of the flood to drown Tom and Maggie, in order to
escape from the unmanageable complication of her story.
Both in “Adam Bede” and in “The Mill
on the Floss” the chief interest is over long
before the tale comes to an end; and in looking at
the whole series together we see something of repetition.
Thus, both Tina and Hetty set their hearts on a young
man above their own position, and turn a deaf ear
to a longer-known, more suitable, and worthier suitor.
Each disappears at a critical time, and each, after
a disappointment in the higher quarter, falls back
on a marriage with the humbler admirer; with the difference,
however, that, as Hetty had committed murder, and
as Tina had just been saved from doing so, the marriage
in the first case never actually takes place, and in
the second it ends after a few months. And as
a smaller instance of repetition, we may compare the
bedroom visit of the seraphic Dinah Morris to the
earthly Hetty with that of the pattern Lucy Deane to
the tempestuous Maggie Tulliver.

There is less of affectation in these books than in
most of our recent novels, yet there is by far too
much. Among the portions which are most infected
by this sin we may mention the description of scenery,—­thanks,
doubtless, in no small measure, to the influence of
that very dangerous model Mr. Ruskin....

Page 297

Before concluding our article we must notice the authoress’s
views on two important subjects which enter largely
into her stories—­love and religion.
That ladies, of their own accord and uninvited, fall
in love with gentlemen is a common circumstance in
novels written by ladies; and we are very much obliged
to Madame D’Arblay, Miss Austen, and the other
writers of the softer sex, who have let us into the
knowledge of the important fact that such is the way
in real life. But the peculiarity of “George
Eliot,” among English novelists, is that in her
books everybody falls in love with the wrong person.
She seems to be continually on the point of showing
us, with the author of “The Rovers”—­

How two swains one nymph her vows may
give,
And how two damsels with one lover live.

Love is represented as a passion conceived without
any ground of reasonable preference, and as entirely
irresistible in its sway. Tina bestows her affections
on Captain Wybrow, while the Captain, without caring
for anybody but himself, is paying his addresses to
Miss Assher; and Mr. Gilfil is pining for Tina, whom,
if he had any discernment at all, he could not but
see to be quite unfitted for him. Adam Bede is
in love with the utterly undeserving Hetty, while
Dinah Morris and Mary Burge are both in love with
Adam, Hetty with Arthur Donnithorne, and Seth Bede
with Dinah. At last, Hetty is got out of the way,
Dinah comes to a clearer understanding of her feelings
towards Adam, and Adam, on being made aware of this,
is set on by his mother to make a successful proposal;
but “quiet Mary Burge” subsides into a
bridesmaid, and Seth, the “poor wool-gatherin’
Methodist,” is left without any other consolation
than that of worshipping his sister-in-law.

But it is in “The Mill on the Floss” that
the unwholesome view which we have mentioned finds
its most startling development. Maggie is in love
with Philip, and Philip with Maggie; Stephen Guest
is in love with Lucy Deane, and Lucy with Stephen,
while at the same time she has an undeclared admirer
in Tom Tulliver. But as soon as Maggie and Stephen
become acquainted with each other, they exercise a
powerful mutual attraction, and the mischief of love
(as the passion is represented by our authoress) breaks
loose in terrible force. The reproach which Tom
Tulliver had coarsely thrown in Philip’s teeth,
that he had taken advantage of Maggie’s inexperience
to secure her affections before she had had any opportunity
of comparing him with other men, turns out to be entirely
just. Stephen is a mere underbred coxcomb, and
is intended to appear as such (for we do not think
that the authoress has failed in any attempt to make
him a gentleman); his only merit, in so far as we can
discover, is a foolish talent for singing, and, except
as to person, he is infinitely inferior to Philip.
But for this mere physical superiority the lofty-souled
Maggie prefers him to the lover whom she had before
loved for his deformity; and the passion is represented
as one which no considerations of moral or religious
principle, no regard to the claims of others, no training
derived from the hardships of her former life or from
the ascetic system to which she had at one time been
devoted, can withstand. Here is a delicate scene,
which is described as having taken place in a conservatory,
to which the pair had withdrawn on the night of a
ball:—­

Page 298

Maggie bent her arm a little upward towards
the large half-opened rose
that had attracted her. Who has not
felt the beauty of a woman’s arm?
—­the unspeakable suggestions of tenderness
that lie in the dimpled
elbow, and the varied gently-lessening
curves down to the delicate
wrist, with its tiniest, almost imperceptible
nicks in the firm
softness?

A mad impulse seized on Stephen; he darted
towards the arm and
showered kisses on it, clasping the wrist.

But the next moment Maggie snatched it
from him, and glanced at him
like a wounded war-goddess, quivering
with rage and humiliation.

“How dare you?” she spoke
in a deeply-shaken, half-smothered voice:
“what right have I given you to
insult me?”

She darted from him into the adjoining
room, and threw herself on the
sofa panting and trembling.[1]

[1] iii. 156.

We should not have blamed the young lady if, like
one of Mr. Trollope’s heroines, she had made
her admirer feel not only “the beauty of a woman’s
arm,” but its weight. But, unwarned by the
grossness of his behaviour on this occasion, she is
represented as admitting Stephen to further intercourse;
and, although she rescues herself at last, it is not
until after having occasioned irreparable scandal.
A good-natured ordinary novelist might have found
an easy solution for the difficulties of the case
at an earlier stage by marrying Stephen to Maggie,
and handing over Lucy (who is far too amiable to object
to such a transfer) to her admiring cousin Tom; while
Philip, left in celibacy, might either have been invested
with a pathetic interest, or represented as justly
punished for the offence of forestalling. But
George Eliot has higher aims than ordinary novelists,
and to her the transfer which we have suggested would
appear as a profanation. Her characters, therefore,
plunge into all manner of sacrifices of reputation
and happiness; and it is not until Maggie and Tom
have been drowned, and Philip’s whole life embittered,
that we catch a final view of Mr. Stephen Guest visiting
the grave of the brother and sister in company with
the amiable wife, nee Lucy Deane. If we
are to accept the natural moral of this story, it
shows how coarse and immoral a very fastidious and
ultra-refined morality may become.

It is with reluctance that we go on to notice the
religion of these books; but since religion appears
so largely in them, we must not decline the task.
To us, at least, the theory of the writer’s “High-Church
tendencies” could never have appeared plausible;
for even in the “Scenes of Clerical Life”
the chief religious personage is the “evangelical”
curate Mr. Tryan, and whatever good there is in his
parish is confined to the circle of his partisans
and converts; while in “Adam Bede” the
Methodess preacheress, Dinah Morris, is intended to
shine with spotless and incomparable lustre.
Yet, although the highest characters, in a religious
view, are drawn from “evangelicism” and
Methodism, we find that neither of these systems is
set forth as enough to secure the perfection of everybody
who may choose to profess it....

Page 299

Mr. Parry, although agreeing with Mr. Tryan in opinion,
is represented as no less unpopular and inefficient
than Mr. Tryan was the reverse; and the Reverend Amos
Barton is a hopeless specimen of that variety of “evangelical”
clergymen to which the late Mr. Conybeare gave the
name of “low and slow,”—­a variety
which, we believe, flourishes chiefly in the midland
counties. On the other hand, Mr. Gilfil and Mr.
Irwine, clergymen of the “old school,”
are held up as objects for our respect and love; and
Mr. Irwine is not only vindicated by Adam Bede in his
old age, in comparison with his evangelical successor
Mr. Ryde, but the question between high and low church,
as represented by these two, is triumphantly settled
by a quotation which Adam brings from our old friend
Mrs. Poyser:—­

Mrs. Poyser used to say—­you
know she would have her word about everything—­she
said Mr. Irwine was like a good meal o’ victual,
you were the better for him without thinking on
it; and Mr. Ryde was like a dose o’ physic,
he griped and worrited you, and after all he left
you much the same.[1]

[1] “Adam Bede,” i. 269.

In “The Mill on the Floss,” too, the “brazen”
Mr. Stelling is represented as “evangelical,”
in so far as he is anything; while Dr. Kenn, a very
high Anglican, is spoken of with all veneration; although,
perhaps, “George Eliot’s” opinion
as to the efficiency of the high Anglican clergy may
be gathered from the circumstance that when the Doctor
interferes for the benefit of Maggie Tulliver, he not
only fails to be of any use, but exposes himself to
something like the same kind of gossip which had arisen
from Mr. Amos Barton’s hospitality to Madame
Czerlaski. As to Methodism, again, the reader
need hardly be reminded of the sayings which we have
quoted from Mrs. Poyser. And while the feeble
and “wool-gathering” Seth Bede becomes
a convert, the strong-minded Adam holds out, even
although he is so tolerant as to marry a female Methodist
preacher, and to let her enjoy her “liberty of
prophesying” until stopped by a general order
of the Wesleyan Conference.

From all these things the natural inference would
seem to be that the authoress is neither High-Church
nor Low-Church nor Dissenter, but a tolerant member
of what is styled the Broad-Church party—­a
party in which we are obliged to say that breadth
and toleration are by no means universal. It
would seem that, instead of being exclusively devoted
to any one of the religious types which she has embodied
in the persons of her tales (for as yet she has not
presented us with a clergyman of any liberal school),
she regards each of them as containing an element of
pure Christianity, which, although in any one of them
it may be alloyed by its adjuncts and by the faults
of individuals, is in itself of inestimable value,
and may be held alike by persons who differ widely
from each other as to the forms of religious polity
and as to details of Christian doctrine.

Page 300

But what is to be thought of the fact that the authoress
of these tales is also the translator of Strauss’s
notorious book? Is the Gospel which she has represented
in so many attractive lights nothing better to her,
after all, than “fabula ista de Christo”?
Are the various forms under which she has exhibited
it no more for her than the Mahometan and Hindoo systems
were for the poet of Thalaba and Kehama? Has she
been carrying out in these novels the precepts of
that chapter in which Dr. Strauss teaches his disciples
how, while believing the New Testament narrative to
be merely mythical, they may yet discharge the functions
of the Christian preacher without exposing themselves
by their language to any imputation of unsoundness?
But, even apart from this distressing question, there
is much to interfere with the hope and the interest
with which we should wish to look forward to the future
career of a writer so powerful and so popular as the
authoress of these books—­much to awaken
very serious apprehensions as to the probable effect
of her influence. No one who has looked at all
into our late fictitious literature can have failed
to be struck with the fondness of many of the writers
of the day for subjects which at an earlier time would
not have been thought of, or would have been carefully
avoided. The idea that fiction should contain
something to soothe, to elevate, or to purify seems
to be extinct. In its stead there is a love for
exploring what would be better left in obscurity;
for portraying the wildness of passion and the harrowing
miseries of mental conflict; for dark pictures of sin
and remorse and punishment; for the discussion of
questions which it is painful and revolting to think
of. By some writers such themes are treated with
a power which fascinates even those who most disapprove
the manner in which it is exercised; by others with
a feebleness which shows that the infection has spread
even to the most incapable of the contributors to
our circulating libraries. To us the influence
of the “Jack Shepherd” school of literature
is really far less alarming than that of a class of
books which is more likely to find its way into the
circles of cultivated readers, and, most especially,
to familiarize the minds of our young women in the
middle and higher ranks with matters on which their
fathers and brothers would never venture to speak in
their presence. It is really frightful to think
of the interest which we have ourselves heard such
readers express in criminals like Paul Ferroll, and
in sensual ruffians like Mr. Rochester: and there
is much in the writings of “George Eliot”
which, on like grounds, we feel ourselves bound most
earnestly to condemn. Let all honour be paid to
those who in our time have laboured to search out
and to make known such evils of our social condition
as Christian sympathy may in some degree relieve or
cure. But we do not believe that any good end
is to be effected by fictions which fill the mind
with details of imaginary vice and distress and crime,

Page 301

or which teach it—­instead of endeavouring
after the fulfilment of simple and ordinary duty—­to
aim at the assurance of superiority by creating for
itself fanciful and incomprehensible perplexities.
Rather we believe that the effect of such fictions
must be to render those who fall under their influence
unfit for practical exertion; while they most assuredly
do grievous harm in many cases, by intruding on minds
which ought to be guarded from impurity the unnecessary
knowledge of evil.

BLACKWOOD’S MAGAZINE

In the early days of the nineteenth century Edinburgh
certainly aspired to prouder eminence as a centre
of light and learning than it has continued to maintain.
Tory energy, provoked by the arrogance of Jeffrey,
had found its earliest expression in London, but the
northern capital evidently determined not to be left
behind in the game of unprincipled vituperation. Blackwood,
unlike its rivals in infancy, was issued monthly,
and its closely printed double columns add something
to the impression of heaviness in its satire.

JOHN WILSON
(1785-1854)

There is admittedly something incongruous in any association
between the genial and laughter-loving Christopher
North and the reputation incurred by the periodical
with which he was long so intimately associated.
He had contributed—­as few of his confederates
would have been permitted—­ to the Edinburgh;
but he was Literary Editor to Blackwood from
October, 1817, to September, 1852. Originally
a disciple of the Lake School, at whom he was frequently
girding, he migrated to Edinburgh (where he became
Professor of Moral Philosophy in 1820), and attracted
to himself many brilliant men of letters, including
De Quincey.

The “mountain-looking fellow,” as Dickens
called him, the patron of “cock-fighting, wrestling,
pugilistic contests, boat-racing, and horse-racing”
left his mark on his generation for a unique combination
of boisterous joviality and hardhitting. Well
known in the houses of the poor; more than one observer
has said that he reminded them of the “first
man, Adam.” He “swept away all hearts,
withersoever he would.” “Thor and
Balder in one,” “very Goth,” “a
Norse Demigod,” “hair of the true Sicambrian
yellow”; Carlyle describes him as “fond
of all stimulating things; from tragic poetry down
to whiskey-punch. He snuffed and smoked cigars
and drank liqueurs, and talked in the most indescribable
style.... He is a broad sincere man of six feet,
with long dishevelled flax-coloured hair, and two
blue eyes keen as an eagle’s ... a being all
split into precipitous chasms and the wildest volcanic
tumults ... a noble, loyal, and religious nature, not
strong enough to vanquish the perverse element
it is born into.”

The foundation of Wilson’s criticism, unlike
most of his contemporaries, was generous and wide-minded
appreciation, yet he “hacked about him, distributing
blows right and left, delivered sometimes for fun,
though sometimes with the most extraordinary impulse
of perversity, in the impetus of his career.”
With all a boy’s love of a good fight, he shared
with youth its thoughtless indifference to the consequences.

Page 302

His not altogether unfriendly criticisms inspired
one of Tennyson’s lightest effusions—­

You did late review my lays,
Crusty Christopher;
You did mingle blame and praise
Rusty Christopher.
When I learnt from whence it came,
I forgave you all the blame,
Musty Christopher;
I could not forgive the praise
Fusty Christopher.

The Noctes Ambrosianae is certainly a unique
production. Though ostensibly a dialogue mainly
between himself, Tickler (i.e., Lockhart), and Hogg
the Ettrick Shepherd—­with other occasional
dramatis personae; the main bulk of them (including
everything here quoted) was written by Wilson himself—­in
this form, to produce an original effect. The
conversations are, for the most part, thoroughly dramatic,
and cover every conceivable subject from politics
and literature to the beauty of scenery, dress, cookery,
and the various sports beloved of Christopher.
There is much boisterous interruption for eating, drinking,
and personal chaff.

Of the longer quotations selected we would particularly
draw attention to the humorous and epigrammatic parody
of Wordsworth, on whom Wilson elsewhere bestows generous
enthusiasm; and the broad-minded outlook which can
appreciate the contrasted virility of Byron and Dr.
Johnson. But it would be impossible to give an
approximately fair impression of the Noctes,
without many examples of those paragraph criticisms
scattered broadcast on every page, which we have presented
as “Crumbs” from the feast. The magnificent
recantation to Leigh Hunt—­on whom Blackwood
had bestowed even more than its share of abuse—­has
passed into a proverb.

ANONYMOUS

As in the case of the Quarterly these untraced
effusions may be assigned, with fair confidence, to
the principal originators of the magazine: Wilson
himself, Lockhart, and William Maginn (1793-1842),
a thriftless Irishman who helped to start Fraser’s
Magazine in 1830, and stood for Captain Shandon
in Pendennis; author of Bob Burke’s Duel with
Ensign Brady, “perhaps the raciest Irish
story ever written.”

They almost certainly combined in the heated attack
on “The Cockney School,” of which Leigh
Hunt’s generous, but not always judicious, advertisement
was an obvious temptation to satire, embittered by
political bias. Coleridge, also, provided easy
material for scorn from vigorous manhood; and Shelley,
as Wilson remarks elsewhere, was “the greatest
sinner of the oracular school—­because the
only true poet.”

CHRISTOPHER NORTH ON POPE[1]
[1] A Discussion of the Edition by Bowles.

[From Noctes Ambrosianae, March, 1825]

Tickler. Pope was one of the most amiable men
that ever lived. Fine and delicate as were the
temper and temperament of his genius, he had a heart
capable of the warmest human affection. He was
indeed a loving creature.

Page 303

North. Come, come, Timothy, you know you were
sorely cut an hour or two ago—­so do not
attempt characteristics. But, after all, Bowles
does not say that Pope was unamiable.

Tickler. Yes, he does—­that is to
say, no man can read, even now, all that he has written
about Pope, without thinking on the whole, somewhat
indifferently of the man Pope. It is for this
I abuse our friend Bowles.

Shepherd. Ay, ay—­I recollect now
some of the havers o’ Boll’s about the
Blounts,—­Martha and Theresa, I think you
call them. Puir wee bit hunched-backed, windle-strae-legged,
gleg-eed, clever, acute, ingenious, sateerical, weel-informed,
warm-hearted, real philosophical, and maist poetical
creature, wi’ his sounding translation o’
a’ Homer’s works, that reads just like
an original War-Yepic,—­His Yessay on Man
that, in spite o’ what a set o’ ignoramuses
o’ theological critics say about Bolingbroke
and Croussass, and heterodoxy and atheism, and like
haven, is just-ane o’ the best moral discourses
that ever I heard in or out o’ the poupit,—­His
yepistles about the Passions, and sic like, in the
whilk he goes baith deep and high, far deeper and higher
baith than mony a modern poet, who must needs be either
in a diving-bell or a balloon,—­ His Rape
o’ the Lock o’ Hair, wi’ a’
these Sylphs floating about in the machinery o’
the Rosicrucian Philosophism, just perfectly yelegant
and gracefu’, and as gude, in their way, as
onything o’ my ain about fairies, either in
the Queen’s Wake or Queen Hynde,—­His
Louisa to Abelard is, as I said before, coorse in
the subject-matter, but, O sirs! powerfu’ and
pathetic in execution—­and sic a perfect
spate o’ versification! His unfortunate
lady, who sticked hersel for love wi’ a drawn
sword, and was afterwards seen as a ghost, dim-beckoning
through the shade—­a verra poetical thocht
surely, and full both of terror and pity....

North. Pope’s poetry is full of nature,
at least of what I have been in the constant habit
of accounting nature for the last threescore and ten
years. But (thank you, James, that snuff is really
delicious) leaving nature and art, and all that sort
of thing, I wish to ask a single question: what
poet of this age, with the exception, perhaps, of
Byron, can be justly said, when put in comparison with
Pope, to have written the English language at all....

Tickler. What would become of Bowles himself,
with all his elegance, pathos, and true feeling?
Oh! dear me, James, what a dull, dozing, disjointed,
dawdling, dowdy of a drawe would be his muse, in her
very best voice and tune, when called upon to get
up and sing a solo after the sweet and strong singer
of Twickenham!

North. Or Wordsworth—­with his eternal—­Here
we go up, and up, and up, and here we go down, down,
and here we go roundabout, roundabout!—­Look
at the nerveless laxity of his Excursion!—­What
interminable prosing!—­ The language is
out of condition:—­fat and fozy, thick-winded,
purfled and plethoric. Can he be compared with
Pope?—­Fie on’t! no, no, no!—­
Pugh, pugh!

Page 304

Tickler. Southey—­Coleridge—­Moore?

North. No; not one of them. They are all
eloquent, diffusive, rich, lavish, generous, prodigal
of their words. But so are they all deficient
in sense, muscle, sinew, thews, ribs, spine. Pope,
as an artist, beats them hollow. Catch him twaddling.

Tickler. It is a bad sign of the intellect
of an age to depreciate the genius of a country’s
classics. But the attempt covers such critics
with shame, and undying ridicule pursues them and
their abettors. The Lake Poets began this senseless
clamour against the genius of Pope.

ON BYRON

[From Noctes Ambrosianae, October, 1825]

North. People say, James, that Byron’s
tragedies are failures. Fools! Is Cain,
the dark, dim, disturbed, insane, hell-haunted Cain,
a failure? Is Sardanapalus, the passionate, princely,
philosophical, joy-cheated, throne-wearied voluptuary,
a failure? Is Heaven and Earth, that magnificent
confusion of two worlds, in which mortal beings mingle
in love and hate, joy and despair, with immortal—­the
children of the dust claiming alliance with the radiant
progeny of the skies, till man and angel seem to partake
of one divine being, and to be essences eternal in
bliss or bale—­is Heaven and Earth, I ask
you, James, a failure? If so, then Appollo has
stopt payment—­promising a dividend of one
shilling in the pound—­and all concerned
in that house are bankrupts.

Tickler. You have nobly—­gloriously
vindicated Byron, North, and in doing so, have vindicated
the moral and intellectual character of our country.
Miserable and pernicious creed, that holds possible
the lasting and intimate union of the first, purest,
highest, noblest, and most celestial powers of soul
and spirit, with confirmed appetencies, foul and degrading
lust, cowardice, cruelty, meanness, hypocrisy, avarice,
and impiety! You,—­in a strong attempt
made to hold up to execration the nature of Byron
as deformed by all these hideous vices,—­you,
my friend, reverently unveiled the countenance of
the mighty dead, and the lineaments struck remorse
into the heart of every asperser.

ON DR. JOHNSON

[From Noctes Ambrosianae, April, 1829]

North. I forgot old Sam—­a jewel
rough set, yet shining like a star, and though sand-blind
by nature, and bigoted by Education, one of the truly
great men of England, and “her men are of men
the chief,” alike in the dominions of the understanding,
the reason, the passions, and the imagination.
No prig shall ever persuade me that Rasselas
is not a noble performance—­in design and
execution. Never were the expenses of a mother’s
funeral more gloriously defrayed by son, than the funeral
of Samuel Johnson’s mother by the price of Rasselas,
written for the pious purpose of laying her head decently
and honourably in the dust.

Page 305

Shepherd. Ay, that was pittin’ literature
and genius to a glorious purpose indeed; and therefore
nature and religion smiled on the wark, and have stamped
it with immortality.

North. Samuel was seventy years old when he
wrote the Lives of the Poets.

Shepherd. What a fine old buck! No unlike
yoursel’.

North. Would it were so! He had his prejudicies,
and his partialities, and his bigotries, and his blindnesses,—­but
on the same fruit-tree you see shrivelled pears or
apples on the same branch with jargonelles or golden
pippins worthy of paradise. Which would ye show
to the Horticultural Society as a fair specimen of
the tree?

North. Show me the critique that beats his
on Pope, and on Dryden—­ nay, even on Milton;
and hang me if you may not read his essay on Shakespeare
even after having read Charles Lamb, or heard Coleridge,
with increased admiration of the powers of all three,
and of their insight, through different avenues, and
as it might seem almost with different bodily and
mental organs, into Shakespeare’s “old
exhausted,” and his “new imagined worlds.”
He was a critic and a moralist who would have been
wholly wise, had he not been partly—­constitutionally
insane. For there is blood in the brain, James—­even
in the organ—­the vital principle of all
our “eagle-winged raptures”; and there
was a taint of the black drop of melancholy in his.

Shepherd. Wheesht—­wheesht—­let
us keep aff that subject. All men ever I knew
are mad; and but for that law o’ natur, never,
never, in this warld had there been a Noctes Ambrosianae.

CRUMBS FROM THE “NOCTES”

MISS MITFORD

North. Miss Mitford has not in my opinion either
the pathos or humour of Washington Irving; but she
excels him in vigorous conception of character, and
in the truth of her pictures of English life and manners.
Her writings breathe a sound, pure, and healthy morality,
and are pervaded by a genuine rural spirit—­the
spirit of merry England. Every line bespeaks
the lady.

Shepherd. I admire Miss Mitford just excessively.
I dinna wunner at her being able to write sae weel
as she does about drawing-rooms wi’ sofas and
settees, and about the fine folk in them seeing themsels
in lookin-glasses frae tap to tae; but what puzzles
the like o’ me, is her pictures o’ poachers,
and tinklers, and pottery-trampers, and ither neerdoweels,
and o’ huts and hovels without riggin’
by the wayside, and the cottages o’ honest puir
men, and byres, and barns, and stackyards, and merry-makins
at winter ingles, and courtship aneath trees, and at
the gable-end of farm houses, ’tween lads and
lasses as laigh in life as the servants in her father’s
ha’. That’s the puzzle, and that’s
the praise. But ae word explains a’—­Genius—­Genius,
wull a’ the metafhizzians in the warld ever
expound that mysterious monosyllable.—­
Nov, 1826.

Page 306

HAZLITT

Shepherd.. He had a curious power that
Hazlitt, as he was ca’d, o’ simulatin’
sowl. You could hae taen your Bible oath sometimes,
when you were readin him, that he had a sowl—­a
human sowl—­a sowl to be saved—­
but then, heaven preserve us! in the verra middle aiblins
o’ a paragraph, he grew transformed afore your
verra face into something bestial,—­you
heard a grunt that made ye grue, and there was an ill
smell in the room, as frae a pluff o’ sulphur.—­April,
1827.

WORDSWORTH

Shepherd. Wordsworth tells the world, in ane
of his prefaces, that he is a water-drinker—­and
its weel seen on him.—­There was a sair want
of speerit through the haill o’ yon lang “Excursion.”
If he had just made the paragraphs about ae half shorter,
and at the end of every ane taen a caulker, like ony
ither man engaged in geyan sair and heavy wark, think
na ye that his “Excursion” would hae been
far less fatiguesome?—­April, 1827.

North. I confess that the “Excursion”
is the worst poem, of any character, in the English
language. It contains about two hundred sonorous
lines, some of which appear to be fine, even in the
sense, as well as sound. The remaining seven
thousand three hundred are quite ineffectual.
Then, what labour the builder of that lofty rhyme must
have undergone! It is, in its own way, a small
tower of Babel, and all built by a single man.—­Sept.,
1825.

COLERIDGE

North. James, you don’t know S.T.
Coleridge—­do you? He writes but indifferent
books, begging his pardon: witness his “Friend,”
his “Lay Sermons,” and, latterly, his
“Aids to Reflection”; but he becomes inspired
by the sound of his own silver voice, and pours out
wisdom like a sea. Had he a domestic Gurney,
he might publish a Moral Essay, or a Theological Discourse,
or a Metaphysical Disquisition, or a Political Harangue,
every morning throughout the year during his lifetime.

Tickler. Mr. Coleridge does not seem to be
aware that he cannot write a book, but opines that
he absolutely has written several, and set many questions
at rest. There’s a want of some kind or
another in his mind; but perhaps when he awakes out
of his dream, he may get rational and sober-witted,
like other men, who are not always asleep.

Shepherd. The author o’ “Christabel,”
and “The Ancient Mariner,” had better
just continue to see visions, and dream dreams—­for
he’s no fit for the wakin’ world.—­April,
1827.

FASHIONABLE NOVELS

North. James, I wish you would review for Maga
all those fashionable novels—­Novels of
High Life; such as Pelham—­the Disowned.

Page 307

Shepherd. I’ve read thae twa, and they’re
baith gude. But the mair I think on’t,
the profounder is my conviction that the strength o’
human nature lies either in the highest or lowest
estate of life. Characters in books should either
be kings, and princes, and nobles, and on a level
with them, like heroes; or peasants, shepherds, farmers,
and the like, includin’ a’ orders amaist
o’ our ain working population. The intermediate
class—­that is, leddies and gentlemen in
general—­are no worth the Muse’s while;
for their life is made up chiefly o’ mainners,—­
mainners,—­mainners;—­you canna
see the human creters for their claes; and should
ane o’ them commit suicide in despair, in lookin’
on the dead body, you are mair taen up wi’ its
dress than its decease.—­March, 1829.

WILL CARLETON

Shepherd. What sort o’ vols., sir, are
the Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry
[W. Carleton], published by Curry in Dublin.

North. Admirable. Truly, intensely Irish.
The whole book has the brogue—­never were
the outrageous whimsicalities of that strange, wild,
imaginative people so characteristically displayed;
nor, in the midst of all the fun, frolic, and folly,
is there any dearth of poetry, pathos, and passion.
The author’s a jewel, and he will be reviewed
next number. —­May, 1830.

BURNS

Shepherd. I shanna say ony o’ mine’s
[songs] are as gude as some sax or aucht o’
Burns’s—­for about that number o’
Robbie’s are o’ inimitable perfection.
It was heaven’s wull that in them he should transcend
a’ the minnesingers o’ this warld.
But they’re too perfeckly beautifu’ to
be envied by mortal man—­therefore let his
memory in them be hallowed for evermair.—­August,
1834.

Shepherd. I was wrang in ever hintin ae
word in disparagement o’ Burn’s Cottar’s
Saturday Night. But the truth is, you see,
that the subjeck’s sae heeped up wi’ happiness,
and sae charged wi’ a’ sort o’ sanctity—­sae
national and sae Scottish—­that beautifu’
as the poem is—­ and really, after a’,
naething can be mair beautifu’—­there’s
nae satisfying either paesant or shepherd by ony delineation
o’t, though drawn in lines o’ licht, and
shinin’ equally w’ genius and wi’
piety.—­ Nov., 1834.

LEIGH HUNT

Shepherd. Leigh Hunt truly loved Shelley.

North. And Shelley truly loved Leigh Hunt.
Their friendship was honourable to them both, for
it was as disinterested as sincere; and I hope Gurney
will let a certain person in the City understand that
I treat his offer of a reviewal of Mr. Hunt’s
London Journal with disdain. If he has
anything to say against us or against that gentleman,
either conjunctly or severally, let him out with it
in some other channel, and I promise him a touch and

Page 308

taste of the Crutch. He talks to me of Maga’s
desertion of principle; but if he were a Christian—­nay,
a man—­his heart and head too would tell
him that the Animosities are mortal, but the Humanities
live for ever—­and that Leigh Hunt has more
talent in his little finger than the puling prig, who
has taken upon himself to lecture Christopher North
in a scrawl crawling with forgotten falsehoods.
Mr. Hunt’s London Journal, may dear James,
is not only beyond all comparison, but out of all
sight, the most entertaining and instructive of all
the cheap periodicals; and when laid, as it duly is
once a week, on my breakfast table, it lies there—­but
is not permitted to lie long—­like a spot
of sunshine dazzling the snow.—­Aug.,
1834.

ANONYMOUS ON COLERIDGE

[From Blackwood’s Magazine, October,
1817]

SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE “BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA”
OF S. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ., 1817

When a man looks back on his past existence, and endeavours
to recall the incidents, events, thoughts, feelings,
and passions of which it was composed, he sees something
like a glimmering land of dreams, peopled with phantasms
and realities undistinguishably confused and intermingled—­here
illuminated with dazzling splendour, there dim with
melancholy mists,—­or it may be shrouded
in impenetrable darkness. To bring, visibly and
distinctly before our memory, on the one hand, all
our hours of mirth and joy, and hope and exultation,—­and,
on the other, all our perplexities, and fears and
sorrows, and despair and agony,—­ (and who
has been so uniformly wretched as not to have been
often blest?—­who so uniformly blest as
not to have been often wretched?)—­ would
be as impossible as to awaken, into separate remembrance,
all the changes and varieties which the seasons brought
over the material world,—­every gleam of
sunshine that beautified the Spring,—­every
cloud and tempest that deformed the Winter. In
truth, were this power and domination over the past
given unto us, and were we able to read the history
of our lives all faithfully and perspicuously recorded
on the tablets of the inner spirit,—­those
beings, whose existence had been most filled with
important events and with energetic passions, would
be the most averse to such overwhelming survey—­would
recoil from trains of thought which formerly agitated
and disturbed, and led them, as it were, in triumph
beneath the yoke of misery or happiness. The soul
may be repelled from the contemplation of the past
as much by the brightness and magnificence of scenes
that shifted across the glorious drama of youth, as
by the storms that scattered the fair array into disfigured
fragments; and the melancholy that breathes from vanished
delight is, perhaps, in its utmost intensity, as unendurable
as the wretchedness left by the visitation of calamity.
There are spots of sunshine sleeping on the fields
of past existence too beautiful, as there are caves

Page 309

among its precipices too darksome to be looked on
by the eyes of memory; and to carry on an image borrowed
from the analogy between the moral and physical world,
the soul may turn away in sickness from the untroubled
silence of a resplendent Lake, no less than from the
haunted gloom of the thundering Cataract. It
is from such thoughts, and dreams, and reveries, as
these, that all men feel how terrible it would be to
live over again their agonies and their transports;
that the happiest would fear to do so as much as the
most miserable; and that to look back to our cradle
seems scarcely less awful than to look forward to the
grave.

But if this unwillingness to bring before our souls,
in distinct array, the more solemn and important events
of our lives, be a natural and perhaps a wise feeling,
how much more averse must every reflecting man be
to the ransacking of his inmost spirit for all its
hidden emotions and passions, to the tearing away
that shroud which oblivion may have kindly flung over
his vices and his follies, or that fine and delicate
veil which Christian humility draws over his virtues
and acts of benevolence. To scrutinize and dissect
the character of others is an idle and unprofitable
task; and the most skilful anatomist will often be
forced to withhold his hand when he unexpectedly meets
with something he does not understand—­some
confirmation of the character of his patient which
is not explicable on his theory of human nature.
To become operators on our own shrinking spirits is
something worse; for by probing the wounds of the
soul, what can ensue but callousness or irritability.
And it may be remarked, that those persons who have
busied themselves most with inquiries into the causes,
and motives, and impulses of their actions, have exhibited,
in their conduct, the most lamentable contrast to
their theory, and have seemed blinder in their knowledge
than others in their ignorance.

It will not be supposed that any thing we have now
said in any way bears against the most important duty
of self-examination. Many causes there are existing,
both in the best and the worst parts of our nature,
which must render nugatory and deceitful any continued
diary of what passes through the human soul; and no
such confessions could, we humbly conceive, be of
use either to ourselves or to the world. But there
are hours of solemn inquiry in which the soul reposes
on itself; the true confessional is not the bar of
the public, but it is the altar of religion; there
is a Being before whom we may humble ourselves without
being debased; and there are feelings for which human
language has no expression, and which, in the silence
of solitude and of nature, are known only unto the
Eternal.

Page 310

The objections, however, which might thus be urged
against the writing and publishing accounts of all
our feelings,—­all the changes of our moral
constitution,—­do not seem to apply with
equal force to the narration of our mere speculative
opinions. Their rise, progress, changes, and
maturity may be pretty accurately ascertained; and
as the advance to truth is generally step by step,
there seems to be no great difficulty in recording
the leading causes that have formed the body of our
opinions, and created, modified, and coloured our intellectual
character. Yet this work would be alike useless
to ourselves and others, unless pursued with a true
magnanimity. It requires, that we should stand
aloof from ourselves, and look down, as from an eminence,
on our souls toiling up the hill of knowledge;—­that
we should faithfully record all the assistance we
received from guides or brother pilgrims;—­
that we should mask the limit of our utmost ascent,
and, without exaggeration, state the value of our
acquisitions. When we consider how many temptations
there are even here to delude ourselves, and by a
seeming air of truth and candour to impose upon others,
it will be allowed, that, instead of composing memoirs
of himself, a man of genius and talent would be far
better employed in generalizing the observations and
experiences of his life, and giving them to the world
in the form of philosophic reflections, applicable
not to himself alone, but to the universal mind of
Man.

What good to mankind has ever flowed from the confessions
of Rousseau, or the autobiographical sketch of Hume?
From the first we rise with a confused and miserable
sense of weakness and of power—­of lofty
aspirations and degrading appetencies—­of
pride swelling into blasphemy, and humiliation pitiably
grovelling in the dust—­of purity of spirit
soaring on the wings of imagination, and grossness
of instinct brutally wallowing in “Epicurus’
stye,”—­of lofty contempt for the opinion
of mankind, yet the most slavish subjection to their
most fatal prejudices—­ of a sublime piety
towards God, and a wild violation of his holiest laws.
From the other we rise with feelings of sincere compassion
for the ignorance of the most enlightened. All
the prominent features of Hume’s character were
invisible to his own eyes; and in that meagre sketch
which has been so much admired, what is there to instruct,
to rouse, or to elevate—­what light thrown
over the duties of this life or the hopes of that
to come? We wish to speak with tenderness of a
man whose moral character was respectable, and whose
talents were of the first order. But most deeply
injurious to every thing lofty and high-toned in human
Virtue, to every thing cheering, and consoling, and
sublime in that Faith which sheds over this Earth
a reflection of the heavens, is that memoir of a worldly-wise
Man; in which he seems to contemplate with indifference
the extinction of his own immortal soul, and jibes
and jokes on the dim and awful verge of Eternity.

Page 311

We hope that our readers will forgive these very imperfect
reflections on a subject of deep interest, and accompany
us now on our examination of Mr. Coleridge’s
“Literary Life,” the very singular work
which caused our ideas to run in that channel.
It does not contain an account of his opinions and
literary exploits alone, but lays open, not unfrequently,
the character of the Man as well as of the Author;
and we are compelled to think, that while it strengthens
every argument against the composition of such Memoirs,
it does, without benefiting the cause either of virtue,
knowledge, or religion, exhibit many mournful sacrifices
of personal dignity, after which it seems impossible
that Mr. Coleridge can be greatly respected either
by the Public or himself.

Considered merely in a literary point of view, the
work is most execrable. He rambles from one subject
to another in the most wayward and capricious manner;
either from indolence,